Sour
by KT the Shimmer Skank
Summary: Tracker Cameron comes tumbling down. [complete]
1. one

**--Sour--**

By KT the Shimmer Skank

Rating: R for harsh language, drug and alcohol references, violence, sexuality, and slightly controversial themes.

Dedication: This one is for Aubrey-doll, of course.

Author's Notes: This is set in AU season four, mainly because I wrote most of it before season four aired and didn't feel like changing the plot around to fit it. My projected length at this point is eight chapters, give or take. It was originally intended to be a one-shot songfic to the Stone Temple Pilots song, "Sour Girl," but the story sort of evolved into something else. Nonetheless, I still much give much love to STP, for their music has been muy influential in the writing of this fic. I do not own Degrassi or make a profit. I hope you enjoy, and reviews are always very much appreciated.

o o o o o o o o o

The sun is going down slow. I'm shaking just a little. Pinkyellow light sneaks through the cracked olive curtains and falls on top of her pale skin, illuminating her like some kind of porcelain whore. She lies across an altar of unclean sheets. I reach out and touch her, even though it feels wrong, and she's just as soft as always. I laugh in spite of myself. She always tries to act so fucking tough, but in reality she's nothing but fragile. So easily broken, so difficult to repair. Porcelain whore.

So I guess that makes all of this my fault. Eh. That's nothing new. I've been carrying the burden of everyone else's shit for as long as I can remember. Babysitting my drunken parents at twelve, moving out on my own at sixteen, taking in my little brother at twenty-one. Being fired from job after job, being fucked over by girl after girl. Something goes wrong, let's make it Tracker's fault. He's so fucking good at taking the blame. And I am. I think that, deep down, it really is all my fault somehow. I certainly don't do anything to make situations better, that's for sure. I just flow. That's all I can do. Take things as they come to me, balance the spinning plates as they stack higher, try to have a little fun and not fuck it up too badly.

I have never been a model citizen, but I've always been able to take care of myself and stay out of trouble. I'm a simple guy. I don't ask for much. Food, shelter, my motorcycle, cable television, and a good lay every once in awhile. When Sean moved in, I learned that a thirteen year old boy needs so much more than that. And it turned out I was the one who had to provide it for him. It was a dose of responsibility that pulled the ground out from under me. My essentials-only existence was thrown for a loop. Suddenly I had to think of someone else's needs before my own. He needed love, guidance, and reassurance; all the things I'd learned to live without. It was hard sometimes. He was so caught up in his junior high troubles, and it was hell for him, but it was hard for me to care at all. _None of this crap will matter in a few years, kiddo_, I wanted to tell him. I sometimes wished I could spare him all that pain by simply telling him not to try so fucking hard. It wasn't worth it. But no, I had to keep those thoughts to myself. I had to be the parent, not the disillusioned older brother. I had to say encouraging things and go to parent-teacher conferences and remind him to keep his nose clean. I had to pretend to give a fuck, and let Sean learn about life for himself.

Taking care of Sean brought new shades of reality to the way I looked at life. At times it made me wonder if one person could really save another, or if in the end we only had ourselves.

Inevitably, there came a time when I chose my own needs over Sean's. I had a dream babe and a dream job calling my name. I mean, was I supposed to give that up just for him? I was supposed to stay in this shithole just because Sean didn't want to leave behind his little girlfriend and his loser gangster pals? I mean, you'd think he'd want to come with me. He'd been going nowhere but down for several months then. Getting away from Degrassi would have been the best thing in the world for him, I thought. I had no idea why he wanted to stay behind. But he did. So I left him. I'm only human.

And alot of good THAT whole ordeal did me. When I returned to Toronto ten months later, it was without Wendy, without dignity, and with only six dollars and thirteen cents to my name. I pulled up on my motorcycle to the shithole house that looked the same as always. I walked through the door and tossed my keys onto the table as always. Sean was planted on the couch, staring absent-mindedly at the TV.

"Hey," he said, without looking at me. It was like I'd only run to the store for milk or something. Like he was just as apathetic to my presence as ever. Like everything was completely the same.

But nothing would be the same again.

"Hey, Sean, are there any--" She had walked into the living room, head to toe black, red hair in frizzy pigtails. She stopped and looked at me. "Oh. Hi. You must be Tracker."

"Yeah, I am," I said dully. I walked into the kitchen without looking at her. I opened the fridge to get a beer; then I remembered I hadn't lived there for ten months, Sean was only sixteen, and there was no beer in the house. I settled for iced tea instead. "So, what? We have a new roommate?" I asked Sean with a smart-ass smile as I poured my drink. The glasses were clean. The kitchen was neat. Sean MUST have had a girl living with him. That was the only explanation. No Cameron man could ever pick up after himself so well.

Sean sighed. He still didn't get up off the couch. Still wouldn't look at me. "This is my girlfriend Ellie. She crashes here sometimes."

Oh, really? I wanted to say. It made me uncomfortable how easily Sean had made this house HIS house. He was a big man now, wasn't he? Thought he could just have girls over whenever he felt like it. I felt it was my duty to put him in his place; remind him he was only sixteen years old, and there was no way he knew how to take care of himself. But then I remembered that I'd been in exactly the same situation at that age. In fact, I hadn't done nearly as well as him. He'd been living by himself in the same place for ten months without getting evicted. That was more than I could say for myself when I first starting living on my own. It had to be the girl, I decided. No way was Sean that responsible on his own. Hell, when I left him he was two steps away from going to juvie.

"I see." The ice in my drink clinked against the sides of the glass as I swivelled it around. "Are there any other random guests I need to prepare myself for? Are we running a motel now?" I tried to sound angry but it really wasn't working for me. It was hard to pretend that I gave a damn.

Sean was not fazed. "No. Just Ellie."

Ellie, the culprit, was still standing somewhat uncomfortably in between the kitchen and the living room. She tucked loose strands of red hair behind her multi-pierced ear and coughed. "It's... nice to finally meet you," she said.

I looked at her for a moment. So this was the type of girl Sean was dating now. She was certainly no Emma. She possessed virtually no color. If it weren't for those bright pink lips and flaming hair, she would have been completely black and white. She was extremely petite, almost too small to fit into her own persona.

I thought of the beat-up orange '87 Civic I'd seen parked on the sidewalk, covered in dust and colorful band stickers. "Is that your car out front?" I asked her.

She nodded. "Well, some of the time. It's kind of a piece of crap. Sean's trying to fix it for me."

I smiled mockingly at Sean. "Aw. What a great guy." I looked down at her chest. Not for any perverse reason, of course. Just because of what her black t-shirt said: Whores On Parade. I pointed. "Great band."

She seemed startled. She looked down, remembered her shirt, and laughed as though embarrassed. "Oh yeah. They really are. Sean and I saw them live a few weeks ago. It was awesome." I nodded vaguely and took a drink of my iced tea. She lingered for a moment before deciding the awkwardness was more than she could take. She went into the living room and sat down on the couch next to Sean.

Well. My homecoming had certainly been interesting. I had expected nothing less. "Well, you kids have fun. I've been driving for the past six hours, and I'm exhausted. I'm gonna go crash in your room, Sean." It had to be Sean's room, of course, because I'd had to leave my bed, as well as most of my possessions, back in Alberta.

I looked at the back of Sean's head, which seemed to be all he was willing to let me see. He gave me a vague grunt, which I took as a yes. As if I was going to listen if he said no. This was my house again, I'd do whatever I felt like doing. I peeled off my leather jacket as I walked out of the kitchen and tossed it carelessly to the ground. I took just one more look at my brother, who I hadn't seen for ten months. He still wasn't looking back at me. But she was. She looked right at me with chilled hazel eyes that I couldn't read. Slowly she turned back around, and she and Sean were both yet again oblivious to my presence.

Upon my return, I called a few friends and managed to land a job working the graveyard shift at the convenient store up the street. Not a glamorous livelihood, but a steady paycheck nonetheless. Sean lost his student welfare once I started working again, but he'd found his own job delivering groceries after school. As we fell into a routine, I began to realize how different life with Sean was now. He wasn't my little brother any more. He was my roommate. He chipped in on rent and groceries, and came and went as he pleased. We barely saw each other. I would just be coming home from work as Ellie was picking him up for school. I slept all day and woke up just as he was stopping by after school before going to his job. Sean was suddenly independent, and I suddenly had the leisure time and unburdened mind I'd been wanting ever since he first moved in.

Too bad I didn't have a damn thing to do with it.

Ellie was there all the time, too, which made it feel that much more like I was living in Sean's house and not my own. Sean finally got her car running, but that didn't make much difference, considering it was always parked in front of our house anyway. Sometimes she would be there even before Sean got home from work. Apparently he'd made her a key. I'd wander in, half-awake in my boxers, looking for Lucky Charms, and she'd like, be there. Watching TV or making a snack or doing homework at the kitchen table. She scared the shit out of me more than once.

One of the times she really threw me off was one morning when I came home from work. It was the first time she'd stayed the night since I'd been there. She'd started a pot of coffee, and she was sitting there in her gray pajamas with a bowl of oatmeal. Her school bag was sitting on the table next to her.

"Jesus fuck," I breathed as I tossed my keys onto the table. I jumped, and then she jumped. It took us a moment to catch our breath.

"Sorry," she said in her usual softspoken voice. "Didn't mean to scare you."

"No," I said tiredly as I stepped into the kitchen. "No, it's cool." I got a glass from the cabinet and turned on the faucet. She continued eating her breakfast completely casually. I sat down on the opposite side of the table.

"So what's the story, kid?" I pulled a cigarette out from my pocket and brought it to my lips. "Do your parents even know you're here?"

Ellie smiled, but it was sarcastic. A sad smile. "My mother is more than likely way too slammed to notice I'm gone."

I nodded, though I wasn't looking at her. I was too busy fishing through my jacket pockets for a lighter. "Yeah, I've been there. But I'm sure Sean's told you all about that." I looked up and saw that she was holding out a red plastic lighter for me. I took it somewhat curiously and lit my cigarette. "You smoke?" I asked, handing it back to her.

She nestled the lighter into one of the small side pockets of her bag. "No." She tugged down the long sleeves of her shirt uncomfortably. Early morning quiet filled the room. I puffed slowly.

"So what about your old man, then? He cool?"

She exhaled slowly and started stirring her spoon idly through her oatmeal. "My dad was killed a few months ago in a suicide bombing in Gaza."

I flicked ashes into the amber-colored ashtray in the center of the table. "I'm sorry."

She nodded. She stared right into her bowl but it didn't look like she was going to eat anything else. She let go of her spoon. She tapped her feet as though listening to music and tugged habitually at her sleeves. Maybe she wanted me to say something. I didn't have anything else to say, though. When it came to death, I was lousy at condolences.

"I should go wake up Sean now," she said, rubbing her tired eyes. She picked up the oatmeal and tossed it into the sink. Then she turned around, leaned against the counter, and stared at me for a moment. She opened her mouth to say something, then just closed it and laughed softly.

"What?" I said. I took another drag of my cigarette.

"Nothing. It's nothing. I'm just tired." She left the room.

I finished my cigarette and went to bed.

Ellie and Sean were always going out on the weekends to see some band or another. It didn't take long for me to realize that not only did they basically have full control over the house now, they also had an astoundingly better social life than me. I tried hanging out with some of my old friends, but it didn't feel the same. Actually, it was exactly the same. That was the problem. The same scenes, the same bands, the same girls. I was fucking bored of Toronto. But hey, where else would I go? Every time I tried leaving I just wound up back here again, and in even worse shape. I was twenty-four years old, and I had yet to break the cycle. It was starting to get pathetic.

"Dude, Heroinface is playing at Red Lounge tonight," my buddy Clint was telling me. It was two in the morning, the store was dead, and we were stuck behind the counter in our orange shirts and blue name tags. "I can't believe I'm stuck working."

I rolled my eyes and laughed. "Yeah, well, Heroinface is a bunch of pretentious Nirvana wannabes and they suck major ass. You're not missing anything. This might actually do you good. A night away from shitty music might like, clear the stupid out of your listening tastes."

"Ha. Ha. Fuck you."

The bell on the entrance door rang. Combat boots attached to purple-fishnet-clad legs sauntered into the store. With one glance at those legs I knew it was Ellie, but once I traced her body to the upper half, I was completely thrown. The guy groping her and sucking on her neck definitely wasn't Sean. I had to blink a few times, and grasp the disparity of the scene playing out before me. My little brother's girlfriend was standing only a few feet away from me, blatantly cheating on him. I watched the blonde yuppie guy make goofball comments as his hands roamed all over her safety-pinned and black-laced body. Ellie giggled. She _giggled_, for Christ's sake. It was baffling. If it wasn't right in front of me, I never would have believed that was her. She was like a completely different person.

It was when she and her guy came up to the counter to check out that she finally noticed me. Suddenly I was right there in front of her and her whole little game was shattered. That's when I saw the Ellie I knew. Her skin was suddenly pale as snow, paler than usual. I smiled jokingly at her with my eyebrows raised. She stared at her feet, her face blank, while the dude, who was completely oblivious, paid for their stuff. She made a quick exit without looking at me. I think she was holding her breath. I stared at the door long after she was gone, still unsure of what I'd just seen.

"Holy fuck," said Clint, licking his lips. "I would totally tap that."

"Dude," I said, shaking my head. "That's my little brother's girlfriend. She's like, sixteen, fuckface."

Clint raised his eyebrows. "Seriously? Ouch."

"Yeah..." I mumbled vaguely, nodding. I already thought of Sean's girl as something of a freakface, but I'd never thought of her as the type to play those kind of games. She was quiet, no doubt, but the idea of her having secrets like that had never occured to me. I didn't know what to think. How much else was she hiding? Her complications seemed to grow every time I saw her.


	2. two

The next time I ran into Ellie turned out to be not so far away. She was waiting for me on the porch at six o'clock when I got off work. She was pacing back and forth, tugging on her sleeves, and she watched me ride up like I was the reaper. It was hard not to notice her tired eyes, carefully covered with powdery make-up and dark eye shadow. I wondered if she'd slept at all, or if she'd spent the entire night cruising with Nameless Blonde Yuppie.

"Don't tell Sean," she blurted out before I'd even gotten off my bike. I watched her with cocked eyebrows as I took my time walking up the steps. I didn't say anything. The whole situation was too funny. She looked at me so pleadingly, so desperately. This sixteen year old girl was on my steps, before the sun had even come up, begging forgiveness. As if my judgement on the situation meant anything at all.

She swallowed hard. "Please don't tell Sean."

I sighed and leaned against the door. "So how long has this been going on?" I asked with genuine interest. I really wondered how long she'd been lying. She was absolutely convincing.

She sighed and looked at me, straight in the eye, with boldness I rarely saw in her. There really was a whole other person hiding behind that quiet personality of hers. "Look, are you going to tell him or not?"

I tried not to grin. It was funny. Sad for Sean, but oddly satisfying. It was nice to watch someone else get screwed over for a change. "Look, you're not my responsibility. You may practically live at my house, but you're still not my responsibility. I don't really give a shit what you do." I paused for a moment to yawn and scratch the back of my head. "But listen, Sean hasn't had things easy, you know? He's real big on you. You're kind of, holding everything together for him right now. Don't lead him on. Do what you want, just... don't hurt the kid."

I mean, come on now. I didn't want to get involved in this teenage romance drama, but at the same time, I couldn't just stand by and let my brother get shit on. I gave her a warning glance, though what I was warning her of I didn't really know. I unlocked the front door and left her there. I didn't even wait around to see what her response would be. I think I was protecting myself from the truth. If she really was going to hurt my brother, I didn't want to see it in her face. I just didn't want to know about it. Ignorance would make me immune to any blame.

Later that day, a package came from Alberta. It was a bunch of the stuff I'd left behind. Apparently Wendy found it in her heart to forgive me to some extent. At least she sent my Bowie shirt; which was a sign that she didn't completely hate me. These packages continued to come for the next few days. She even sent back my mattress, which I was glad to have back; the piece of crap Clint let me have just didn't have the same feel. The last package she sent me was light and thin, and inside was the divorce papers.

I collapsed into the decaying puke-green arm chair with a sigh as I looked them over. The details had all been worked out already, both of us in agreeance, but seeing it there in front of me was still depressing. One of my biggest fuck-ups ever, laid out nice and neat, black and white, in perfect legal terms.

"What did she send you this time?" Sean asked from his lounging position on the couch. I tore my eyes away from the papers for a moment to look at him. He had the day off from work, so it was one of those rare times where we were actually home at the same time. Why, I wondered, did my weakest moment just happen to be during one of the only times my little brother was home? God likes to fuck with me.

"Sean, did I ever tell you that women are the source of all evil?" I asked him, bringing my eyes back to the divorce papers.

He shrugged. "No, I must have missed that one."

I nodded. "Yeah, well. They are. Just a heads up." I leaned back in my seat. It's funny how hard it was to accept that things were really over with Wendy. When she threw me out, I was more than ready to get away from her. But like, by signing this paper I was admitting to my failure. That was never easy. "Get me a pen, Sean."

Sean snorted and tossed another M&M into his mouth, with no indication whatsoever that he was about to move. "Get it yourself."

"Come on, I'm serious. Just get up and get me a pen."

"Yeah, no, not gonna happen."

"Jesus," I muttered. I tossed the papers onto the coffee table and meandered into the kitchen to get the pen myself. When I returned, Sean had picked up the papers and was looking them over.

He looked up when he noticed me standing there waiting. "So are you like, upset?" he asked, handing them back to me.

I rolled my eyes as I returned to the armchair. "Sean, my marriage lasted less than a year. Yeah, I'm just a tad bitter."

Sean's eyes fell slightly. It was strange. It was the first time since I'd come home that he looked at me with anything other than absolute apathy. For a moment he actually seemed to give a shit about my existence. "Do you still love her?"

Those were his words, but the tone of his voice seemed like it was really asking, "Did you ever love her?" As if the idea of me loving someone was too bizarre for him to comprehend.

I laughed. "Love is a funny thing, kiddo." I signed the first line. There it was. Official. Tracker Cameron is a screw-up. "I mean, for example, I love Mom and Dad. But that doesn't mean I'm capable of being around them for more than an hour or so at a time. Sometimes you love someone so much you can't even stand to be around them." I signed the next two slots where my signature was required. "So you see, I love Wendy like crazy. I just don't want to ever look at her or speak to her again."

Sean shook his head and laughed lightly as he scarfed down more M&M's.

I sighed as I finished with the papers and then laid them back down on the coffee table. "I'm glad this is so amusing for you, Sean. Really. Your entertainment is my number one priority." His smugness about the whole situation was more than annoying. I would have liked to bring up the fact that his precious girlfriend was in fact a filthy lying slut, but no, I couldn't do that. This was another one of those times when I had to be the mature one and hold my tongue.

We watched TV together in silence until Ellie waltzed through the door. She had let herself in, of course. Something happened when she walked through the door, something that didn't usually happen when she was around. I turned my head to look. She fought not to make eye contact with me.

That was the difference. I was looking. I never looked before. I never used to give a shit when she walked into the room. But after the night I'd seen her in the convenient store, it was like Ellie suddenly existed. I noticed her for a change. She would walk into a room and I couldn't help but acknowledge it. I would run into her briefly and in those few seconds, in whatever few meaningless words we exchanged, I would try and see through her. I didn't really want to notice her, but I did. There was something more to her.

She and Sean left quickly, in a hurry to go out and do whatever those carefree teenagers did, and soon I was sitting all alone. The dull roar of a game show on the TV, the noisy ceiling fan, and the divorce papers on the coffee table were my only company as the sun slowly set outside the window, leaving me in darkness.

I probably would have stayed like that the entire evening, staring at the TV without really watching it as I contemplated my misery, if Clint hadn't called and insisted that we hang out together on our night off. I agreed half-heartedly, and half an hour later he arrived with pizza, beer, and Phil Santos, his roommate and my good friend from high school. He claimed to have the perfect remedy to cheer me up. Because obviously, when you realize what a failure of an adult you are, the thing to do is get drunk off your ass with guys you've known since puberty. I felt like such shit I almost didn't even have the energy to drink. But of course, I did, and two hours, one pepperoni pizza, and a twelve pack later, I was in such a good mood that I somehow thought it would be a great idea to give Wendy a call and let her know just how fabulous I was doing without her.

Clint and Phil were sprawled on the couch, doubled-over with laughter, as I dialed the number and tried not to crack up myself. She answered on the third ring, and when I heard her voice, softly creeping through the receiver with a touch of static, I suddenly realized what a stupid idea this was. And instead of finding it funny, I found it sad. Miserably, overwhelmingly sad. "Weeenndy?" I murmured, barely able to pronounce the word.

There was a pause. "Tracker? Is that you?" I nodded, without realizing she couldn't see me through the phone. I wondered what she was doing, what she was wearing. If there was anyone else there with her. "Hello?"

"H-h-hey," I managed to slur out. "How are you? I wuz thinking aboutchu."

She let out an angry groan, just the way she used to do when we were arguing and I said something she didn't like. "Jesus Christ, Tracker. Are you drunk?"

"No." Obviously an enormous lie. "Listen I was just thinking about you. Can't I call you just to say how you're doing? Whatchu doing?" It was driving me crazy how the words I wanted to say were so clear in my head, but whenever I tried to say them out loud nothing came out but an incoherent drunken babble.

Her voice was tired and empty. Like she was too sick of me to even feel. "Look, Tracker, don't call here any more. Just sign the papers and send them back to me." Her warm voice was then gone, and the iciness of the dial tone was all that remained.

Clint and Phil were turning purple at this point, probably not even really understanding why they found it funny. "Smoooooth," said Phil, waving his arms around as he spoke. Golden bubbling beer sloshed out of the can in his hand and spilled onto my couch. "Very smooth."

"Dude you are SUCH a fucking faggot, man. I love you. You're retarded!" Clint said far too loudly for normal speech. He continued to crack up until he rolled off of the couch, and even when he hit the floor with a loud thud, he kept howling loudly into the carpet.

I dropped into the armchair in defeat. My mood had faded from mildly amused to somewhat maudlin. I had remembered why I'd gotten drunk in the first place, and it was depressing. I rested my forehead on my hand and gently rubbed my temple.

"Well, well, lookee here!" said Clint, lifting himself off of the floor. He reached under the couch and pulled out a pair of plain but scantily-cut black women's panties. He twirled them around on his finger and laughed. "So just who do these belong to, Tracker?"

I gazed with my bloodshot eyes at the silky black material. There was no way they belonged to any girl of mine, since I hadn't been with anyone since Wendy, and I knew for sure they weren't hers. I shrugged. "Must belong to Sean's girlfriend," I said. It was a profound realization. Ellie's black underwear, there in my house.

An explosion of laughter emitted from Clint's mouth and he buried his face in the panties to stifle it. "Are you SERIOUS? Slutty McRedhead? The one we saw in the store?" I shrugged again, trying to appear indifferent. Clint cackled on. "Oh, MAN. I can't believe YOUR little brother is hitting that shit. I thought he was still like, twelve. That's crazy! They grow up so fast..." He continued to occupy himself with the novelty of a teenage girl's underwear, until Phil snatched it away from him and the two of them started wrestling drunkenly for ownership of the panties.

"Yeah, but apparently _we_ don't..." I mumbled. I felt a bizarre feeling that was somewhere in between amused and disturbed to think of Sean having sex. On my couch, no less. With... her. I reached over to the coffee table and grabbed myself another beer. The evening went on like that, me drinking beer after beer as Clint and Phil acted like idiots, until eventually I lost count of cans and passed out.

The morning, or actually the late afternoon, brought with it the worst hangover I'd had since high school. There was a dull ringing in my ears and a hurt in the back of my head that felt like I was being slammed with a sledgehammer over and over again. I opened my eyes slowly. The harsh flourescent lights stung and made my head twinge even more. Someone was playing Red Hot Chili Peppers at a low volume on the stereo. I sleepily gazed around and saw Ellie squatting on the living room floor, busily picking up empty beer cans as if this was a normal daily activity. She looked like a little girl who was used to cleaning up a drunkard's mess. I wondered if she even realized what she was doing, or if it had just become a habit for her.

"Where's Sean?" I mumbled. My voice was scratchy and worn.

Ellie's breath caught slightly when she realized I was awake. "He's still asleep," she said quietly.

"Where's Phil and Clint?"

"They left after Sean and I got home. Sean kind of kicked them out. He was... really upset when he saw you passed out." She held her breath, waiting for me to speak.

I laughed. "Yeah, well, Sean's a baby." I climbed out of the chair and rubbed my eyes as I walked to the bathroom. There were a few moments of pause after I'd gone in before I heard Ellie's voice right by the door.

"I think you should talk to him," she said through the thin wooden door. "He's feeling really angry and afraid right now. He needs you to set an example."

I was still only half-awake, and trying to register all this was not helping my headache at all. For a second there I could have sworn I was hearing my mother's voice. Well, I mean, pre-alcoholism Mom, anyway. "Um, thanks, Princess, but I'm not really looking for free family counseling at the moment," I barked back at her over the sploshing sound in the toilet. I finished pissing and zipped my pants, neglecting to flush. I wandered over to the medicine cabinet and began rummaging for some Tylenol. To my astonishment, Ellie continued babbling.

"Look, I know I shouldn't interfere, but I worry about Sean. I mean, you must remember what it's like to come home and find your parents drunk. Sean needs..." She stopped rambling when I abruptly swung open the door and stared at her.

"Like, who the fuck are you supposed to be?" I asked in geniune confusion. I leaned against the frame of the door and watched her with honest bewilderment. "I mean, really. I come home and you're like, everywhere. You eat my cereal, you play my CDs, you leave your underwear in my couch, you clean my living room, you even go fucking grocery shopping. And now you're fucking lecturing me on how to communicate with my little brother. I don't know if anyone has pointed this out to you yet, but YOU DO NOT LIVE HERE. I mean, I'm sorry, but Sean and I kind of have a system here, and it's been working just fine since long before you ever came around. So, please, butt the hell out. I draw the line at you telling me how to run my fucking house." God. Ouch. I realized with something of a pang that I sounded way too much like my old man.

She bit her lip and looked down, staring at the chipped black fingernail polish of her clasped hands. "I'm sorry, it's just..."

"No. Shhh. Just shhh." I held my throbbing head in my hands. "Big-ass headache here, kiddo." I sighed and walked past her. I searched the floor until I'd found my jacket, then grabbed my keys off the table and headed for the door.

"Where are you going?" she asked, as if I'd just walked away from an important conversation. As if I'd actually been even remotely paying attention to a word she said.

"For a walk. It reeks of teen angst in here and I just can't dig that." I strode out the door, shut it a little harder than I intended, and shoved my hands in my pockets as I left the house.


	3. three

Generally, when I went for walks, I would end up at one of three places. The first was the Stop N Shop for smokes, the second was Wendy's house, and the third was Dunkin Donuts. I had at least enough cigarettes to get me through the day, and option B was of course non-existant at this point, so ten minutes later I found myself sitting in a pink and orange booth, slowly making my way through a chocolate eclair. And because all my friends are predictable losers like me, Phil showed up only minutes after me, and joined me at my table.

"You look hung over as hell," he said, snatching a glazed donut from me.

I sighed and took a look at him, bloodshot-eyes, hair a greasy mess and still stuck in yesterday's t-shirt. "You're not looking so peachy yourself, pal," I grumbled with a mouth full of eclair. I sighed and looked out the window. The world looked harsh and desolate through the unwashed glass. "And get your paws off my donut, fucker."

Phil laughed but kept shoveling the donut in his mouth all the same. Ah, the bonds of friendship. So fucking eternal. "So, you off work today, too?"

"Until eleven. Why?"

"I'm taking a little trip to Montreal in about an hour." Phil smirked and licked the sticky clear glaze from his fingers. "I'm gonna sell some shit. Thought you might like to tag along."

It's kind of depressing to know someone so well you feel like you know everything they're going to say before they say it. Phil was like a Pink Floyd album that had been put on repeat for the past six years. Nothing ever changed about him, except maybe for the gradual decline of healthiness in his face. He looked tired. I sighed. "Phil, man, you know I'm not into that shit."

He pouted. Like we were still thirteen years old or something. "Aw, come on, Cameron. You're such a snooze. All you ever do is sit at home. You could use a little excitement, buddy. And you damn sure could use the extra cash. Working the night shift ain't gonna pay the bills, man. I know this guy Frank who can hook you up with some shit, give you some contacts. It's easy money..."

"Everything doesn't have to be easy, man." I was surprised by the firmness in my own voice. Damn. There it was again. That psycho-parent tone. I almost sounded like a fucking adult. "I may be living on the edge of Shitsville, but I at least want to be able to say I make an honest living. This isn't junior high, man. I can't get involved with that shit. I've got Sean to think about. And I'm not gonna be working the night shift forever. I'm trying to line up some interviews. I'm just in a rut right now."

Phil shrugged it off, grinning widely. But I saw the disappointment in his eyes. He'd really been hoping I'd tag along. I guess it was lonely, the cycle he lived in. He sold drugs to make money to buy more drugs. While I saw the appeal of this escape, I couldn't let myself get suckered in. I hadn't come that close to the bottom. At least not yet. "Okay, okay. I'll get off your case. Just let me know if you change your mind." He reached forward to take my last donut. I moved quickly to smack his hand away. He laughed. "Dude, chill out. Christ. You've been so uptight since you got back, man. It's killing me to see you like this."

I stared dully at him. "Oh, yeah. You seem real torn up about it."

"No, I'm serious. You need to get out of the house, meet some people. When's your next day off?"

"Uh... Thursday, I think."

"All right, Thursday night, we're hitting the town, man. No excuses, no whining. Oh! Dude, I think we can get into the Dead Sexy Tired show. You'll love them, they kick ass. We are going to get you drunk and laid and that's the end of it." He reached out yet again, yanking away my donut, and jumped out of the booth before I could stop him. "Catch you later, man."

I hung my head and sighed, shoving the rest of my eclair into my mouth. I wondered to myself just how much truth there was to the saying, "You can tell alot about a man by the company he keeps."

When I got back home, the mess my wasted friends and I had left had been completely cleaned up. Ellie sat casually in the middle of the spotless living room, idly flicking her red lighter. She held the flame to the loose white threads of her frayed jeans, watching them burn.

"You know what they say about kids who play with fire," I said to her with a sigh, tossing my jacket onto the couch. "They wet the bed." It was the same thing my mom used to tell Sean and I when we tried to blow things up in the back yard. Ellie ignored my comment and continued to be fascinated by the glowing orange fire. She brought the lighter to the tip of her index finger, the flame dancing against her skin. I edged closer to watch. "Jesus fuck. Doesn't that hurt?"

She continued to watch her flesh burn and shook her head. "Nah. I play guitar alot. My fingers are pretty much calloused over. I can't feel a thing."

What a mother fucking weirdo, I thought to myself. I looked around the room. "Where's Sean?"

"He's out back working on my car."

"Again?"

"It's a shitty car. I thought we established this."

I rolled my eyes. "Maybe Sean's just a shitty mechanic. I hope you know the two of you are next to worthless."

"Yeah, Tracker, and you're a real winner, aren't you?"

Ouch. I was all about putting this stupid girl in her place, but I had to stop myself. Getting into an argument with a freeloading little girl wasn't something I felt like being a part of just then. I suddenly felt very tired. I simply shook my head and turned to walk away. "Don't burn the house down," I warned as I left the room.

I left through the back door and found Sean, huddled over Ellie's engine with his brow furled in heavy concentration. "Boo," I snapped.

Sean jumped slightly, then turned around to glare at me. I had to smile. It was almost funny the way Sean always looked at me like I was the last person on the planet he wanted to see. "Good one," he spat with the iciest of sarcasm. He returned to his girlfriend's car, tuning me out as usual.

I sighed and plopped down on the steps. I rested my elbows on my knees and buried my chin in my hands. I watched Sean adjust the timing belt. He was doing it wrong. Man, fucking idiot. How could he not realize he was doing it wrong? I opened my mouth to correct him a few times, but bit my tongue. I figured, let the kid fuck it up. If I tried to tell him he was messing up, he'd end up twisting it around so that somehow it was MY fault he was doing it wrong.

"Did you come out here for a reason?" he asked me. "Because I'm kind of busy."

I had to squint my eyes against the sun to look at him. I found myself staring at the back of my brother's head like always. Sometimes I felt like I'd forgotten what his face looked like. I'd been away from him for almost a year, and now that I was finally home, he seemed intent on hiding from me as often as possible. "Nah," I said flatly. I had nothing better to say than nah. "No reason. Just kickin' back."

He mumbled something I couldn't understand into the engine of the car. I shook my head. Just being around him got me exhausted. If only I had a book of translations for teenage grunts and eye-rolls, I just might have the patience to make sense of him. Sean, the enigma, the big whiney baby, the bully, the unstable one. He had this way of making the simplest things into huge complicated issues. Drama followed Sean like stink on a wet dog. For awhile I felt sorry for the kid, but once he started living with me full-time, I began to realize half of his problems were all his fault. I mean, if he wasn't such a douche all the time, things might be a little easier on him.

"Look, Seany, I'm sorry about the guys," I said. And I really was sorry. Sorry Sean was such a baby. "I won't let that happen again."

Sean shrugged indignantly. "Don't be sorry. It's your house. Seeing you passed out like a drooling drunkard actually brought back some memories. Felt like I was right back in Wasaga."

Ouch. Pull the Mom and Dad card why don't you. "Yeah, well, this isn't Wasaga. It's never going to be like that. I know you and I aren't the same as we used to be, Sean. But I hope you know me well enough to know I'm never going to let things get that way. That's not how I roll and you know it." I hoped he knew it. I hated to admit that maybe I was trying to prove myself to Sean, but something inside me made me want him to know it.

He shrugged again and looked at me with his weary eyes. "Yeah, I guess." He turned back around and buried himself in the car engine yet again. I got up and went back inside, leaving the space between us just as empty as it had been before.

As soon as I walked into the house, I found myself face to face with the redhead. She was grinning broadly with geniune approval. "What?" I asked with a sneer.

"You talked to him."

I rolled my eyes and walked away from her. It occured to me that it was time for another round of Tylenol. Just my luck, though, she followed me as I walked to the bathroom. "I don't know what you're so giddy about," I told her. "He's still pissed off. Sean's _always _pissed off. There's no way around it."

She leaned against the doorway, still smiling, as I reached into the medicine cabinet. "I know. But you really did make a difference by talking to him. Really."

"Whatever, Red." I pulled out the plastic bottle of Tylenol, and as I did, a small strip of metal tumbled off the shelf and into the sink. I looked at it for a moment before picking it up. It was a razor coated in dried blood. I heard Ellie's breath catch sharply. I watched as the color drained subtly from her face. Her eyes flitted away from me, staring at the cracked paint of the doorway moulding instead. "What the fuck is this?" I asked disgustedly, spitting the words right into her face.

She shrugged. Didn't even bother to deny it.

I shook my head and held the razor out for her to take. "Look, kid, I've told you before you're not my responsibility. Don't you ever bring this shit to my house again. You got problems, you keep them at home, got it?"

Her eyes returned to mine, cold amber-green staring into me. The initial fear faded from her expression and I found myself facing the same Ellie I'd seen a few weeks ago at the convenience store. Dangerous, careless, bold. She had lifted the veil of demure she constantly hid beneath. There was no bull shitting with me and she could sense it. She took the razor from my fingers and nodded slowly as she slid it into her pocket. I felt prickles on the back of my neck, suddenly creeped out by her. I poured two Tylenol into my hand and dry-swallowed quickly, then left the bathroom and retreated to the sanctuary of my room, the only teen-free place left in that shithole.


	4. four

I stood in silence on the porch, leaning against the cold vinyl siding and smoking my cigarette. The pitch black darkness that I watched with such intrigue was shattered by an explosion of florescent glow when Sean swung open the front door and dashed down the steps.

"Where you off to, slick?" I called after him.

His quickly moving feet shuffled to a stop and he turned reluctantly to face me. His face was too thickly covered in shadow for me to read it. Not that I ever knew what Sean was thinking, anyway.

"I'm going over to Emma's house," he said, shoving his hands into his pockets and trying to sound as non-chalant as possible.

I laughed and exhaled thick smoke at the same time. "Emma? That's different. I thought you were done with that mess."

He wrinkled his nose and gave me a look of bored contempt, as if Sean's life was just oh-so-complicated an idiot like me could never understand. "I'm not going there for her. In case you've forgotten, I'm with Ellie now. You know, red hair, hangs out here all the time?"

"Hey, smartass, watch your tone." I wanted so badly to wipe that holier-than-thou snarl off his face with something a little less gentle than words.

He rolled his eyes and shrugged. "Whatever, okay? Mr. Simpson's been helping me out alot lately and he invited me over for dinner." That appeared to be all of my divine ignorance he was willing to put up with. He readjusted the black beanie on his head and walked away.

I contemplated my brother and all his complications as I smoked in the dark. But by the time I'd finished my cigarette and tossed it carelessly to the gravel driveway, I'd stopped giving a shit about his moodiness and utter inability to look me in the eye. I got on my bike and hit the pedal hard, driving away to spend a much-needed night away from sullen teenagers, bills I could barely pay, and a fucking house I couldn't escape.

I was amazed that amongst the huge crowd gathered outside the Red Lounge, I actually managed to locate Phil. He'd made friendly with a pair of blondes who were closer to the door and we managed to bypass the long wait. Or the longer wait, I guess I should say, as it was still a good twenty minutes before we got through the door. It wasn't long before I'd grown weary of the evening. Red Lounge wasn't really my scene any more. I was more into smaller venues, smoky bars where I could sit in peace and enjoy the tunes.

No, Tracker, tonight isn't about that shit, I reminded myself. No more sitting in lonely bars, listening to lonely music, drowning out the world. I was there because I was going to meet people, have a good time, and interact with the world for once. I tried to wipe the boredom from my face and put on a smooth smile, pretending like this was the kind of thing I gave a shit about.

When at last we walked through the doors, Dead Sexy Tired had already taken the stage and worked the crowd into a frenzy. The entire club was filled with a swarming mass of dancing bodies, bathed in blue and red lights. I couldn't help but get the feeling that everyone looked the same in this place. Once you stepped onto the dancefloor, you became another faceless piece of the music, moving as a whole. Phil's face lit up with an excitement that had long been absent from him. He wrapped one arm around each of the blondes, who honest to God were named Candy and Cookie, and dove right into it. Sighing heavily, I trudged along behind them. Cheap beer, cheap sound system, cheap blondes; this used to be the kind of thing Phil and I lived for. I tried to play along and dig the scene, but deep down I couldn't help but realize I was already bored.

Throughout the night I ran into old friends. I went through the same "How are you? Whatchu been up to? Yeah that's great, I just went through a shitty divorce" routine until I wanted to puke. And the kind of people I ran into, of course, were the ones that I never actually wanted to see again. The same losers and burn-outs I'd known since high school; all the idiots, like me, who couldn't seem to do anything with their lives. It was thoroughly depressing, and even the prospect of banging Candy, who kept making passes at me, couldn't really cheer me up. What made it worse was the abundance of people much younger than us; kids Sean's age, partying it up in the same place that used to be filled with all my favorite people.

Inevitably, I drifted away from the crowd. I planted myself at a crooked table in the back of the club, tossing pretzels down my throat, smoking, and gently easing my way through a beer. It didn't even seem worth it to get drunk, a revelation that illustrated even more the pitifulness of the situation.

"Oh, Trackerrrrrrrr," a giggly voice erupted from the sea of people. A sweaty, disheveled blonde came bouncing towards me, stumbling into a chair at my table. It was Candy, I think. Or maybe it was Cookie. Who the fuck could tell, anyway? "Why aren't you out there daaaancing? Isn't this band like, so rad?" She laid her head on my shoulder, completely unable to balance herself, and exhaled a rancid wave of beer-breath all over me.

"Yeah, real rad," I replied, tapping the ashes from my cigarette into a plastic green ash tray. I noticed I could see all the way down her shirt with ridiculous ease.

She giggled again, spit dribbling from her mouth onto the sleeve of my shirt. "You know I really really wish you would come dance with me." Her words slurred together into nothingness, her lips pressed against my shoulder.

I sighed. There wasn't even a challenge here. She really couldn't have made it any easier. I probably could have banged her in the bathroom right then. But I had to wonder if I had really reached that pathetic of a point in my life. Surely I had evolved beyond easy lays with cheap bleach blondes? Or maybe I was that pathetic, and maybe this really WAS as good as it got.

Luckily, I didn't have to make that call. At least not yet. There was a loud crash as someone stumbled right into us. Candy flailed on top of me as the table shook violently. Gray and black ashes spilled out of the ash tray all over me. I grabbed hold of Candy and helped her regain her balance while glancing over to catch a glimpse of the girl who'd run into the table. She lifted her head of teased red hair and stared back at me. Despite the heavy eye make-up and glitter, I still recognized Ellie's face. She, however, looked at Candy and I with strangely vacant eyes, before bursting into wild laughter.

"Oops!" she cackled. She gripped the sides of table so tightly I could see her fingers turning white. It took me a moment, staring at her with my mouth open, to soak her in. Just like the night at the convenient store, except maybe magnifying that feeling times ten, I felt like I was looking at a completely different person. An acid green fishnet shirt trailed from her thumb to her shoulder, through which I could see her heavily scarred arms and nothing but a hot pink bra. She was buried in layers of black make-up, clunky jewelery, a black skirt that barely covered anything, and more thigh-high fishnets down her legs. It was the first time I'd noticed how thin she was. Her over-dramatic make-up had begun to smear because of the thick layer of sweat around her face. She looked like the kind of chick who would get into bar fights, who'd get you drunk and steal your wallet, who'd give blow jobs behind the 22nd Street grocery store to pay for a crack addiction. She didn't look at all like the sixteen year old girl who helped my brother with his math homework and took care of a drunken mother. Inside her eyes I saw a frightening emptiness; she was completely fucked up.

"Ew," moaned Candy, standing up to wipe off the beer that had spilled from my bottle. "Watch where you're going, bitch."

Ellie only laughed harder, falling to her knees, arms still clinging to the filthy table. I ignored Candy's complaints over the ruined outfit and got out of my seat, peering over at the crumbling teenage girl on the floor. "Ellie?" I said, speaking her name slowly and clearly.

She looked around frantically at the sound of her name, as if she barely even knew what was going on around her. I sighed and squat down beside her, placing my hand on her shoulder and shaking her slightly to get her attention. "Ellie? Hello?"

She contemplated me for a moment with her bloodshot eyes, before comprehension dawned on her face and she cracked a dazed smile. "Tracker," she said, poking my face with her fingers. She sighed. "Tracker, my friend. What are you doing here?"

"I should be asking you the same thing," I said, looking into her eyes. She wasn't drunk. She was beyond drunk. She was fucked up on something crazy.

"Me? I'm just here kickin' it with my buddy Craig." She started laughing again, this time slowly drifting towards the ground. "Kickin' it. Haha. Isn't that funny?"

It wasn't funny, actually. But I found myself laughing anyway. "God damn. You're high as a kite."

She giggled and murmured meaningless words, sprawled across the floor haphazardly, unaware of the shifting mass of rushing feet that threatened to trample her at any second. I reached foward and wrapped my arms around her, and felt the ridiculous weight of her. Like she was made of stone. With a great heave I pulled her up, even though she was so fucking dazed she really wasn't helping at all. She could barely support her own weight without falling back down to the ground. Finally I got sick of her stumbling, and scooped her up and carried her instead.

"I'm sleepy," she gurgled dreamily. "So so so so sleepy."

"Yeah, well, keep your fucking eyes open," I muttered as I pushed my way through the pulsing crowd. I wondered where the hell I was going to put her. "I really wouldn't recommend going unconscious at this point." I looked down at her face, at the icy blankness in her eyes, and knew she hadn't heard a single word.

I scanned the crowd for Phil, who was drunk out of his mind and busily trying to unsnap Cookie's bra as they danced. It took more energy than I really cared to spare at the moment, but after awhile of screaming in his ear that I needed to get Ellie home, I managed to get his car keys from him. No reason for him to be behind the wheel, anyway, as plastered as he was. And no way was I hauling that chick home on the back of my bike.

My arms were getting tired as I carried Ellie yet again through the teeming mass of drunk head bangers. We were nearly to the exit when a tall, curly-headed teenage guy with two drinks in his hands jumped in front of us and stopped us.

"Ellie!" he said, laughing. The liquid in the plastic cups splashed and spilled over the edges as he shifted his weight back and forth. His eyes were hot pink with intoxication. "I've been looking for you everywhere, man! I met this guy... haha... Ellie, I met this guy, and his fingers were like, GREEN..."

I stared at him, then glanced down at the wreck of a teenage girl in my arms, wondering if she was even conscious. I sighed. "Look, dude, I don't know who the fuck you are, but we're beyond out of here, so adios." I shifted Ellie with another big heave, trying to make the burden of her a little less painful.

Confused, the kid came chasing after us, tugging on my arm, making it even harder to carry her. "No, wait, don't leave me, man!" He had a mad, fearful look in his eyes, and he seemed half-way between laughing and crying. His hands were trembling as he tried to grip my arm, pulling on my patience.

Finally I stopped and turned to look at him, gritting my teeth with anger. I gazed at him for a moment, realizing I'd definitely seen this kid before, and tried to place him. When it came to me, I couldn't help but grin sarcastically and shake my head. "Oh, man, I know you. I can't believe this. You used to hang out with Sean all the time. What the fuck happened to you, man?" He stared at me with sincere confusion, eyes wandering, struggling to maintain his balance. He was so stoned he probably didn't even know where he was, let alone who I was or what was happening. I shoved his arm off me and lifted Ellie's body slightly so that he could see her. "Look at her, asshole. She's fucking strung out to next Tuesday. She's your _friend's girlfriend_, man. Do you even realize what you're doing? I don't know what you thought you were gonna do tonight, but forget it, party's over. She's going home."

I left him standing there with that same oblivion in his eyes as I shoved through the intoxicated crowd and finally made it out the door.

Sean wasn't home yet when I pulled up in Phil's car, which was a much bigger relief that it should have been. It wasn't like _I _had done anything wrong. There wasn't any blame he could place on me. But somehow I knew he would. If he was to see me carrying in his completely wasted girlfriend, it would somehow be all my fault. And I guess, in all honesty, I knew it would hurt him to see her like this. I was glad that he didn't have to.

She had begun to stir somewhat as I carried her to the bathroom, and when I flicked on the bright fluorescent light of the bathroom, there was no doubt that she was fully conscious. She started thrashing around in my arms, crying out incoherent thoughts. Her eyes were alive with fear, and she started shaking more than ever. Miscellaneous bathroom supplies avalanched to the floor as her arms flailed wildly, knocking everything over.

"Where am I?" she cried. All the color had drained from her face, and there was a geniune blankness lurking in her eyes. She was out of her mind. "I don't... Where am I... Mommy..."

I placed her shivering body in the shower as gently as I could, hoping she wouldn't hit her head on the ceramic sides of the tub, and cranked the cold water nozzle as far as it would go. I stood with my arms folded and watched as she screamed, shielding her face from the icy rain. She continued to convulse and cry out until she got tired, and her screams faded into pained moans. I was dying for a cigarette; this shit was just a bit much for me. When she finally seemed to have calmed down some, I reached forward and turned off the water, and then helped her sit up. She was still shaking a little, but her eyes weren't quite as glazed over, and she seemed more aware of what was going on.

"Where am I?" she mumbled softly, trying to stand up.

"You're home," I said, sitting her back down. I realized that she wasn't _exactly _home, but she was stoned anyway, and complicated answers weren't worth the effort. "Sit down, man. Just chill. You need some water." I went to the sink and filled up a paper cup for her. I sat down beside the tub and tried to make her drink it, but she just shoved my hand aside. Her hands felt weak.

"I'm not thirsty." She combed her fingers through her wet hair and exhaled. Her breath trembled over her lips. I grabbed her chin with my hand and held the cup to her mouth, forcing her to drink. When the cup was empty, she tore it out of my hand and tossed it to the end of the tub. "Jesus. Fucking choke me why don't you. My head hurts."

"Yeah, I'll bet it does. You and your little Craig friend got fucked up out of this world."

She laughed and scratched her legs idly, tugging at the elastic black threads of her fishnets. It was hard for me not to notice the dragonfly tattoo on her inner thigh as she laid sprawled across the soaked white tub. I shook my head, shook those thoughts, and got up to get her another cup of water. "I hate Craig," she told the bathroom wall, laughing as she said it. "You know? He's such an asshole. He doesn't even realize how selfish he is. I don't even know why I hang out with him. All he wants to do is fuck me." She laughed even harder at this, thoroughly amused. "He's such a joke. He'll sit there when he's hanging out with me and Sean, and he'll just stare right at me. He doesn't even know how obvious he's being. He looks at me and I can totally tell that he wants to fuck me. Everyone wants to fuck me. Haha. Everyone..."

Her voice trailed off, fading into nothing but soft giggles. When she turned back on her other side, I was hunched over her with more water. She seemed surprised to see me, and it made her laugh even harder. "Sneaking up on me, eh?" She reached out with wet fingers and touched my forehead. "I'll bet you want to fuck me, too, don't you, Tracker? Haha. Of course you do."

"You bet, kiddo," I said dully, putting the cup into her hand. "Now drink this."

She took the cup and wrinkled her nose at it in contempt, but rather than argue, she drank all of it in one large gulp. She flopped over on her other side. Her body relaxed and her breathing slowed. Worried, I grabbed her shoulder and shook her awake. "Ellie, don't go to sleep. Wake up."

She turned and looked at me, squinting her eyes, then dropped back down and closed her eyes.

"Ellie, stay awake. You might not wake up again if you go to sleep now." She mumbled something in response, and soon I noticed she had drifted to sleep again. I sighed and quickly decided it wasn't worth trying to keep her awake. Instead I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out a cigarette. I sat against the wall as I smoked, hoping to God she'd wake up fine in the morning. The last thing I wanted was to have to explain to the cops was why there was a dead teenage junkie in my bathroom.


	5. five

The pain in my neck after sleeping with my back against the bathroom wall was unbelievable. I blinked and looked around the room, soaking in the realization that I'd spent the night in a bathroom. I came to my feet, rubbing my sore neck, and noticed that Ellie was gone. Well, at least I hadn't found her dead. I leaned over the sink and splashed some water on my face. My reflection looked tired. I needed a shave and a haircut. I looked like shit, in other words. Not exactly the look I wanted on the day of a job interview.

I trudged wearily across the living room, where Sean was parked on the couch eating a Pop-Tart. He whipped his head around in confusion. "You're up?" he asked, raising his eyebrows. "I didn't even hear you go in."

Oh, right. Guess you missed the part where I was in the bathroom all night watching over your druggie girlfriend. "Yeah," I said, yawning. I went into the kitchen and started a pot of coffee. I was overcome with the haunting feeling that each morning I woke up, the day ahead seemed longer.

Sean didn't even ask where I was going when I left the house a few hours later, dressed in a clean black shirt and the only pair of jeans I owned that were hole-free. I showed up at Mark's Motors ten minutes late and stepped into the back office with a pretty unhappy-looking dude with a plastic name tag that read, "Leonard."

For the next half hour I shifted from side to side uncomfortably in my red plastic chair while Leonard looked over my application with scrutinous eyes and tossed gruff questions my way. I'm a charmer, by nature, good at giving people what they want. I mean, sure it's all bull shit, but even bull shitting takes a certain level of skill. Unfortunately, Leonard remained completely unimpressed with everything I had to say. I guess with the truth about me in black and white in front of him, there was only so much meaningless elaboration I could give him.

"Mr. Cameron, I'm gonna have to say my greatest concern is the length of your former jobs," said Leonard. He flicked his mustache and took a loud sip of his coffee. "You were fired from Holston's in 2001 after only eight months of employment?"

Eh. Holston's. It was a lousy gig, anyway. "Yes, well, the situation there was a misunderstaning. There was a family emergency, and I couldn't get into work one day. My boss was pretty unforgiving." Family emergency being my my mother calling me up in tears one day and saying if I didn't come get Sean and let him move in with me, he was going to jail.

"Mmhmm." Another flick of the mustache. I was taking that to be a bad sign. "And your next job, you quit after a year and a half?"

Yeah, that... that was a lousy gig, too. "I had to leave for personal reasons." Personal reasons being the owner was a dick and he was pushing me around. If there's one thing I won't give up, it's pride. At least that's what I thought two years ago. But with Leonard giving me those evil eyes, pride suddenly didn't seem so important.

"Mmhmm, and the job after that? For Tires Express?"

"I was given a better offer." Better offer being the Alberta dream-job. Where I went with Wendy.

"Yes, and that better offer... you quit in less than a year?"

Right, that. That wasn't exactly the best choice I made. "I had to deal with some... family issues." Family issues being a bitter, ungodly divorce.

Leonard sipped his coffee and glanced over my application again. I shifted again as he left me to sit in awkward, hopeless silence. At last he stood up, signaling to me that the interview was over. I stood up as well and reached out to shake his hand. "We'll review your application and call you in the next few days," he said, shaking my hand so weakly I knew the outlook wasn't good. "But I'm going to have to tell you flat out, I don't think there's much chance of this working out, Mr. Cameron. Your record just isn't as reliable as we generally look for."

In other words, fuck off, you lousy bum. I nodded and mumbled a thank you, anyway, before getting the hell out of there as soon as possible. It's just one job, I tried to tell myself. Don't get angry. It's just one job. It didn't help. I still slammed the door and pounded on the gas pedal harder than I should have, speeding away from Mark's Motors, never to return.

I went to Phil and Clint's apartment and let myself in. Clint was sprawled on the couch with a bong, watching reruns of British comedies on public television. Just looking into their apartment made me feel at least a little better about myself; my life wasn't quite THAT much of a shithole.

"Tracker, man!" Clint greeted, not bothering to get off his ass. "Wanna hit?"

"No thanks," I said, surveying the wasteland he called home. "Where's Phil? I brought his car back."

Clint shrugged and took a hearty hit from his bong. "Dunno. Haven't seen him since yesterday."

"Oh. Well... I hope he found a ride somewhere. I kind of jacked his car last night."

"Eh, I wouldn't worry about it. Phil disappears all the time. Shows up a few days later like nothing happened. It's all good."

Once Clint had fulfilled his daily buzz, he gave me a ride back to Red Lounge where my bike was waiting for me with a fifty-dollar ticket stuck to it. Just my fucking luck. I fired up the bike and angrily rode back home. The ticket in my pocket flared up all new disappointment over the job interview I'd blown.

The last thing I wanted to deal with, of course, was whiney teenagers. So naturally, the moment I walked in the door, I spotted Sean and Ellie in the kitchen, looking back at me with the guiltiest of faces. I sighed. "What it is it?"

"We need to talk," said Sean.

My initial thought was, shit, Sean's got the girl pregnant. And if that was the case, I so did not want to hear that shit at the moment. I had enough of my own messes to clean up without dealing with Sean's. "We'll talk later. I'm not in the mood right now." I went to the fridge and pulled out a beer, then made my escape out the back door as quickly as possible.

I popped open my beer and took a weighty gulp as I sat on the back porch. I stared at the white-trash clutter of my back yard. A graveyard of car parts and cigarette butts. An orange alley cat maneuvered through a hole in the fence. I looked up at the sun, high in the sky. It was barely past noon, and I was chugging a beer on my back porch. I'd reached a low mother fucking point.

I heard the screen door creak open. "Tracker?" said Ellie's soft voice.

"For the love of Christ," I groaned, not bothering to turn around. "Can't I get one god damn minute?"

"Sorry." She came and sat down beside me anyway. "Look, I'm not going to drag this out. I want to move in."

I felt a headache coming on; this was even worse than her being knocked up. "No way, man. Forget it."

"I won't be any trouble, I promise. I'll keep the house clean, I'll do all the errands. I'll get a job and chip in with the rent if I have to. Tracker..." I felt her sad brown eyes digging in to me, and I had no choice but to look at her. What a miserable face, I thought. There was nothing in her eyes that begged for pity; there was only the misery in her face. It spoke for itself, and it gave no excuses. "My mom and I got in a huge fight today. It was pretty messy. But she's agreed to go to rehab. I just need somewhere to stay while she's gone. Please. I've got nowhere else to go."

I reached into my jacket pocket and retrieved a cigarette. "Rehab, eh? Are you sure you shouldn't be going with her?"

Her eyes fell. She tugged at her sleeves and said nothing.

"Look, Ellie, here's the thing: you're trouble. You're a cutter, a druggie, a slut, and most of all, you're a liar. I realize your life is a little fucked up and all that, but welcome to the real world. Everyone's life is fucked up. All I want to do right now is get _my _life in order, okay? I sure as hell don't have time to deal with you and your baggage. Not to mention the fact that for the first time ever, Sean actually has a chance of going somewhere in his life. He has a chance, you know? The last thing he needs is you bringing him down and fucking it up for him."

I watched her face as I exhaled gray cigarette smoke in her direction. She looked like she'd just taken a bullet to the head. "How can you say that?" she snapped, acting for the first time as though she had some kind of pride to defend. Her voice was shaky, but determined all the same. "I love Sean. _I'm_ the reasonSean's got a chance. I'm the one who's been here while you were GONE, Tracker. Don't... don't try to tell me that I don't care about Sean. I'm not perfect, but I'm no worse than you. You've got no right to judge me."

She was probably right, I realized with reluctance. But that didn't mean I had to help her. "I don't owe you anything."

"No... you don't. But you owe Sean. You know he wouldn't want me on the streets. Please, Tracker. Just do this. At least for Sean." She looked at me pleadingly. I tried to fight her eyes as I took another drag. She kept going when she realized I was fading. "I really have been getting better. I promise I won't cause any trouble. That razor you found was old. I haven't cut in months. And I've stopped seeing Spinner, too. I've been doing _really _good, I swear."

"Wait, what? Who the fuck is Spinner?"

Her skin got paler. "The guy you saw me with... at the store. I broke it off with him after I talked to you. And last night with Craig... I was just desperate, okay? Things with my mom were getting out of control, Sean was busy... I just wanted to get out of the house. All I'm asking for is a place to stay, Tracker, please..."

"All right, just stop." I brought my face to my hands and rubbed my temples. This was so much more shit than I wanted to know. "Just, shut up. You can stay, all right? But I don't want you bringing that shit with you, hear me? I'm not bringing you home wasted or lying to Sean for you any more, got it? The first time you fuck up, you're gone."

Ellie smiled, and I sighed. I knew I was going to regret this later.


	6. six

Ellie moving in had surprisingly little impact on the routine. There were only a few subtle details that made her permanence obvious to me. Thin strands of red hair on the couch. A cannister of pink shaving gel in the shower. Tampons under the bathroom sink. The house being just a little neater than usual. And after my brief experience of being married, even those things barely fazed me at all. After a few weeks I actually started thinking having Ellie around was a good thing. She stayed out of my way, she kept the house clean, and she kept Sean from being mopey and annoying all the time. Couldn't complain about any of that.

There were moments, though, when I would have done anything to get rid of her. Sometimes it happened when she was doing something completely normal, like brushing her teeth or washing the dishes. I didn't know quite what it was, but I would just see her and be overwhelmed by her. She seemed so faraway, hiding behind the quiet and mundane, and for some reason that pissed me off. It pissed me off that she was such a mystery. And then those moments collided, of course, with the moments that made me hate her even more: the times I'd catch her fucking up. I'd see her on the phone, smiling and saying things in hushed tones, like she was keeping a secret. Or I'd see her tracing her finger along her arm, eyeing it with longing. Once I came home from work around five in the morning, and I found her sitting against the bathroom wall, holding the lighter to the soft flesh of her wrist and watching in silence as the skin turned raw pink.

"No callouses there, eh?" I said quietly.

There was a cryptic tear easing down her cheek as she shook her head. I didn't ask her what was wrong, or try to find out why she was doing this. I didn't even yell or tell her to get the fuck out of my house. I just shook my head and walked away, shutting the door behind me. From then on we had a kind of silent agreement to pretend that the "other Ellie" didn't exist.

"For the love of fuck, Ellie, open the God damn door," I groaned. I'd been locked out of my own bathroom all morning, while Ellie did God knows what inside. I stood there yelling and banging on the door for half an hour, but Ellie had continued to nonchalantly refuse my entrance. Fucking girl. Thought she owned the God damn house.

"Patience is a virtue, Tracker," she called teasingly from within. "I'm almost finished, you big baby."

I muttered words of defeat under my breath as I hit my head against the door. "You've been in there for _two hours _for Christ's sake. I don't know what you've been doing in there, but you damn sure better flush..."

The door swung open and she stood in front of me, grinning like a little girl who's been playing dress-up. She held out a strand of raven black hair, one of many streaks now scattered throughout her red mane. "What do you think?" she asked. "I was going for edgy."

If you asked me, it was about damn time the girl took a few steps _back _from edgy. But I didn't have time to tease her, however. I was too busy looking past her at my shower, which was now soiled with puddles of inky black goo. "Aw, fuck," I muttered, scratching the back of my neck. I shook my head. "You do realize that's where I bathe, don't you?"

Ellie smirked. "You bathe? Oh, my bad. I didn't think this thing had been used in awhile." I gazed at her with dull, tired eyes, hoping to show that I was not amused. She rolled her eyes. "Don't worry, I'll clean it up. Don't I always clean up after myself? You're a real downer, you know that? You need to lighten up and have a little fun." She reached for the counter and wiped up a stray glob of dye with her fingers. "Maybe you could use a new hairstyle too, eh?" She stood on her toes to reach my hair and rubbed in the dye with a laugh.

I was fucking speechless. I clenched my teeth and fists, eyeing her with shock and fury. "You. Are. DEAD," I warned her. She saw the look in my eyes and let out a girlish scream, running past me and into the living room. I glanced around the bathroom and grabbed the plastic bottle of black dye from the counter. I chased after her into the kitchen, trying not to laugh as she darted around in playful fear.

"No! No, Tracker, I'm sorry!" she squealed, maneuvering around the island. She ducked behind the red cardbord box of Lucky Charms in an attempt to hide her face.

I smiled sinisterly and shrugged. "Should have thought of that before you trashed my bathroom and fucked up my hair, kiddo." She made a dash for the living room and I cut her off. I jumped at her and she let out another squeal as I pinned her to the couch. She whined pathetically as she tried to writhe her way out from under me. I hovered over her with a cocky smile. "Any last words?"

"Aw, don't do it! Pleeease..." She curled her lower lip into a heavy puppy-dog pout.

I laughed. "Yeah, nice try. So not gonna work."

I took the bottle and aimed. She turn slightly red in the face with a mixture of screams and giggles as I squirted the black goo all over her shirt. She reached out with her thin arms and grabbed hold of the bottle, turning it towards me instead. I shielded my face and eyes against the spray of hair dye, laughing as I tried to fight back. When we were both sufficiently winded and covered in black grossness, I gave up and chucked the bottle to the corner of the living room. Our laughter subsided and we panted to catch our breaths. I realized with surreal discomfort that Ellie was far too close to me; I could feel her breath on my neck. She noticed it, too, but didn't try to hide it. She reached forward with her soft fingers and wiped a drop of dye from my face.

"Don't want to, uh, get it in your eye," she said softly. "It might burn."

Her hand was still on my face and I wasn't sure what to think of that. Luckily, I didn't have to. I heard Sean's key wriggling in the door and crawled off her just as he walked into the house with a bag full of groceries. I had to collect myself for a moment, and shake off the feeling of her warm body beneath me. I was unnerved. I was still breathing hard as Sean stood there watching me with curiosity. I'd been caught.

_Caught doing what? _I had to ask myself. Nothing happened. I didn't do anything. I didn't think anything I shouldn't have been thinking. Nothing happened.

"What the hell happened to you?" Sean asked, eyeing my black-stained clothes. He walked into the kitchen plopped the groceries down on the island.

"Ask the beautician," I said, pulling out my pack of cigarettes.

As I brought my lighter to the tip of the cigarette, I heard someone knocking at the door. Ellie had scurried back to the bathroom, and Sean was putting away groceries, so I went to answer it. As soon as I opened the door, a strung-out mess of Phil tumbled into my arms, moaning in disoriented pain. "Jesus fuck," I breathed, trying to balance my cigarette in my mouth and keep Phil from dropping to the floor. He was shaking, sweating like a pig.

"What's going on?" Sean asked, watching the disruption from the kitchen with concern.

I didn't answer him. I carried Phil over to the couch and helped him sit down. "Phil," I asked, scared out of my mind. "Are you all right, man?"

Phil looked over at me with glazed eyes, seemingly trying as hard as he could to focus on me. "Hey, man," he croaked dazedly. He almost didn't know where he was. "I gotta stay here, man. I gotta stay here. I got nowhere else to go. My baby sister is looking for me, I gotta stay here."

"Okay, okay, man," I said, holding his shoulders. The shaking was about to drive me insane. I didn't know what the hell he was fucked up on, and part of me didn't even want to know. I jumped up to get him a glass of water, feeling an odd sense of deja vu from the night I'd had to take care of Ellie.

As I walked into the kitchen I met Sean, who stood in front of me with a stone glare. "No fucking way," he said, shaking his head furiously. "That deadbeat cannot stay here, Tracker."

I rolled my eyes and walked past him, straight to the sink to get a glass of water.

"I'm serious, man. This isn't a God damn half-way house, we're not taking in junkies off the street. I'm not gonna let you do that, especially not with my girlfriend in the house."

I almost chuckled. It was hard to resist. I mean, if there was one person I wasn't worried about protecting, it was Sean's mother fucking girlfriend. "Sean, just shut up, all right? I know it's hard for you to wrap your brain around, but I'm still the adult here. Step off." I filled the glass and carried it back to Phil. I held the glass to his lips, but half of its contents didn't even get into his mouth. The water dribbled down his stained gray t-shirt as he stared into nothingness. It killed me to see him like that.

"I can't believe this. I can't believe you're actually going to let this freak stay here. You're fucking ridiculous, Tracker."

I slammed the unsuccesful glass of water on the coffee table. Phil jumped. I sighed heavily and ran my hands tiredly through my hair before reaching out to try and calm him down. I glared at Sean. "Look, Phil's my friend and he's staying, God damn it. If I have to deal with walking in on your psycho-masochist girlfriend fucking herself up, then you can deal with my psycho-junkie friend crashing here for a few days. Got it?"

Sean immediately fell into cold silence. Phil started convulsing out of nowhere, slipping out of the couch. Ellie was now standing in the bathroom doorway, her face white as snow. Someone was pounding on the front door again. My head was beginning to spin. I struggled to pull Phil off the floor; he started muttering nonsense and I tried to soothe him. The front door kept throbbing, unanswered.

"Sean, get the door." He was still frozen, staring across the room at Ellie. I groaned and spoke louder. "SEAN, get the God damn door."

With slight reluctance, he moved at last to the front door and answered it. I heard him talking to someone. A few minutes later, an angry, trembling teenage girl had marched into my apartment and was hovering over me as I held my shaking friend.

"Shit," said Phil through his daze. "Don't let her in, Tracker. Don't let her in."

"I already AM in, Philip!" the girl snapped. Streams of black mascara were running down her pretty face. She stared at him with a bitter mixture of loathing and solemn concern. "God, look at you. We've been looking for you for three days, Philip. Three days, and nobody knew where the hell you were! And now you're strung-out again! I can't believe this." She began to break down in gentle sobs.

"Manuela, I'm not high, I promise!" Phil lied. He attempted to stand up and embrace her. She pushed him away harshly and he collided into the couch once more. I folded my arms as I watched her, crying as she gazed at her wasted brother. She was torn in two, not knowing if she wanted to love him or hate him. I swallowed hard. I suddenly wished Sean hadn't seen me drunk that night.

"Don't feed me your bull shit!" she screamed. "You hawked my boyfriend's drum set to buy crank, you asshole! I can't keep doing this, Philly. None of us can! Mommy's been crying for three days straight. What the hell is WRONG with you? Why can't you just pull yourself together?" Her black curls began to flop wildly around her head as she choked on her tears. In a fit of rage, she slid the pink purse off her shoulder and began slamming Phil with it over and over again. Though considerably wasted, Phil attempted to fight back, shoving and slapping his sister across the face. The next thing I knew they were beating the shit out of each other, and I realized it was a good thing Phil was high; had he been straight, he probably could have seriously hurt her. From some kind of trailer park instinct, Sean and I intervened at the same time. He pulled the girl away and took her into his arms, where she buried her face and cried. I held down Phil, pinning his arms behind him and trying to keep him from wailing on himself or me.

"Sean," I commanded with urgency, pointing to my keys on the table. "Take my bike and get her home. Tell her I'm taking care of Phil."

I could see in Sean's eyes that he desperately wanted to argue, but he seemed willing to bite his tongue and accept that the situation was too intense for his intervention. He nodded slowly and picked up my keys as he led Phil's hysterical sister out of the house. I sat with Phil for a few more minutes, convincing him that his sister was gone and that he was going to be all right now. I didn't actually believe for a second that he was going to be all right; the mother fucker was so stoned he could barely remember yesterday. But the meaningless lies seemed to work well enough to calm him down.

When Phil seemed to no longer be a violent threat, Ellie slipped back into the living room and sat across from us in the arm chair. She sat quietly and watched me for awhile as I tried to get Phil to drink more water and explain what the hell he'd been doing for the past three days. I hoped she was paying close attention and realizing that I'd had to go through the same ordeal with her only a few weeks ago. I didn't have the malice, however, to bring that little encounter up out loud.

"Why did you tell Sean I still cut?" she said at last, breaking the quiet that had come.

I glanced over at Phil, who had finally stopped freaking out as he watched a rerun of The Price is Right. I turned back to Ellie, who was looking at me with geniune hurt in her eyes. How could she ever wear a face like that, like she was the victim? Just when I thought she didn't have a single true emotion, she'd do something to surprise me. There was so much of her I had yet to unravel.

"Why do you lie to Sean?" was my answer.

She looked down at her knees. "I don't want to hurt him. He doesn't deserve to have to deal with my problems. Weren't you the one that told me I shouldn't bring Sean down with me?"

I laughed soundlessly, suddenly feeling so very tired. It had been a hell of an afternoon. "Yeah, I guess I did. But you know, if he loves you like I think he does, he'd find a way to take care of you. He'd make it work out. And if you really love him like you claim you do, you'd want him to know the truth." I retrieved a much-needed cigarette from my crumpled pack and lit it. I took a slow first drag and blew the smoke towards the ceiling. I watched the blades of the creaking fan cut through it and spread it across the room.

"That's a pretty idealist observation coming from someone so cynical."

I shrugged. "I'm only cynical because I speak from experience. Life's rough. Shit happens. Stuff you can't even control, you know? Bad shit happens to good people, and there's nothing you can do about it. But one thing I know is that lying only makes everything worse. Lying... man, I can't even tell you. Lying is like, hiding from all that bad shit. Pushing it under the rug or whatever. But it's still there. It's not going to go away. If you just face it with honesty, you know, accept it, it makes life that much easier."

Ellie smiled crookedly, her eyes full of a sadness that hit me hard. I almost forgot that she was a psycho, conniving little whore, and remembered that she was a young girl who had alot of problems. "We can't all be that strong," she said.

I had to breathe for a minute as I soaked that in. I smoked my cigarette and contemplated the concept. I had never thought of myself as being strong. If I was a stronger man, I wouldn't have been scraping the bottom like I was. "It's not about being strong. It's just... I don't know." I exhaled a heavy wave of cigarette smoke and looked over at Phil, drooling and completely unaware of where he was. The mother fucker was hopeless, but that didn't mean I could turn on my back on him. I rubbed my temples and realized I was in desperate need of a drink. "It's just about doing what you've got to do." I picked up the glass of water from the coffee table and brought it to Phil's mouth once more, gently easing the cool liquid down his throat.

Ellie's eyes were heavy, like she was crying without tears. "But that _is _strength, Tracker. Look at you. You're so strong. You can't help but take care of the ones you love."

I laughed and took a puff of my cigarette. "Yeah? Try telling that to my ex-wife."

"I mean it." She stood up and tucked a few stray locks of red and black behind her ear. She came towards me and placed a hand on my back as she bent to speak to me. I could feel her breath on my neck once more, cold and warm at the same time. "I'd give anything to have your strength."

She walked away and went into her room. The click of the door as it shut rang loudly in my head. I exhaled. Maybe she was in there burning herself again, or cutting, if she was feeling dangerous. Maybe she was calling up one of her secret lovers, the ones she claimed were a thing of the past. Maybe she was just sitting there, crying or sleeping or touching herself. And that's when I had to stop myself from thinking. I was scaring myself. I shook just a little as I brought the cigarette to my lips again. I inhaled, and exhaled, and watched the smoke rise. I concentrated hard on keeping my mind from going to places it shouldn't be.


	7. seven

In the weeks that followed I spent my time avoiding home, avoiding my brother, but most of all avoiding her. Her presence was unnerving and all-consuming. When I was around her I couldn't help but feel like I had to put some kind of guard up. I didn't know what she was doing to me and I didn't like it. I knew for damn sure, though, that I didn't want to be alone with her.

My continued efforts to get a decent mechanic job went just as badly as Mark's Motors, so instead I just started getting as many shifts at the convenient store as I could. I had to convince people to give me their shifts, which wasn't hard, considering most people working at that kind of job were deadbeats, anyway, and weren't trying to earn an honest buck like I was. When I wasn't at work I drifted towards Clint and Phil's, where I would watch cable-less television and endure bad take-out food while they smoked up and passed the time with meaningless chatter. And when I got sick of those two clowns, I wound up at the undesirable but somehow welcoming bar six blocks from my house. There I could waste hours on a single beer, listening to music on the piss-poor stereo and trying hard to clear my mind of all thoughts. I'd made a resolution not to get drunk again, but I did manage to keep a steady trickle of alcohol in my system from time to time, just enough to keep me mildly buzzed and numb.

Sean didn't like it, of course. My absence made him even more unforgiving and hateful towards me. I tried coming home only when neither of those two kids were around, but when Sean did happen to catch me, he'd give me looks of ever-increasing loathing. I know what he saw: a deadbeat brother that's never home, can't get a decent job, spends all his time either in a bar or with his two junkie pals, and doesn't give two shits about anyone else. And yeah, he may have been right about most of that. But I did give a shit, for whatever that's worth. I cared about Sean. I wanted the best for him. I avoided home because I wanted to stay out of the way. Sean had his own life now, and I didn't want to fuck it up. That's what happens when I'm around. Things go wrong, and no matter who's fault it really is, I'm the one who takes the blame.

It was late March, and the last gasping breaths of winter had finally drifted away. Spring was ahead. Time for the world to wake again. I came home one windy afternoon after a tiresome double shift, hoping to God there would be no sour-faced little brother waiting there to toss hateful glares at me. What I needed was peace and quiet. I wanted to sip a beer, smoke a cigarette, and watch crappy TV without any interruptions. A simple dream, right? Should be easy to realize, right? But of course, my life being what it is, my hopes were crushed before I'd even open the door. Within the house, I could hear the rhythmic strumming of an acoustic guitar.

I walked inside and tossed down my keys, and saw her sitting there. She was on the couch, legs propped on the coffee table, cradling the instrument in her lap. I could nearly see all the way up her fringed black skirt. I turned my head and sighed.

She looked over at me. "Well, hello, stranger," she said in her soft tone. "We don't see you around here much, do we?"

I exhaled tiredly and ignored her, walking straight for the kitchen. I wouldn't let her presence faze me, I decided. I grabbed a beer and a cigarette just as I'd planned and collapsed into the arm chair. I alternated gentle sips and drags as I stared at the ceiling fan.

Ellie peered over at me. "I wish you wouldn't drink," she said.

I looked at her and blew out a cloud of smoke. "I wish you wouldn't annoy the fuck out of me."

She smiled. "Touche." I glanced back at the fan, wishing she wouldn't look at me like that.

I was rescued by someone knocking at the door. I jumped up almost too eagerly to answer it. When I swung the door open, I think I stopped breathing for a minute or two. She was there, on my front steps. I know it was naive of me to think I'd never see her again, but that didn't make it any less weird to suddenly have her three feet away from me. She was wearing that red jacket that I loved so much. Her black hair was caught up in the wind, flying freely around her stone face. Her hands were in her pockets as she stood before me, her stance projecting the distance between us. I didn't know what to think.

"Wendy," I said. I almost tossed aside my cigarette out of habit; she had made me quit when we started seeing each other. But then I remembered about us not being together any more. About us being the farthest thing from together. I took a drag right in front of her, subconsciously wishing she'd bitch me out about it. But she didn't. She didn't even seem to notice. "What are you doing here?"

"Come on, Tracker, you know why I'm here," she answered.

I shrugged. "I don't, actually. Am I supposed to be a fucking mind reader now?" Wendy sighed with an exhausted kind of impatience. Mentally, I kicked myself. I didn't want to make her angry again. I wanted to pull her close, touch her again. I'd been dreaming of that red jacket for weeks. But there's something inherent in the Cameron genes that causes me to be an asshole at the moments when I least want to. The harder I try to say the right thing, the more wrong it comes out.

She shifted her weight to one side, hands still in her jacket pockets as she stood on her cocked hip. Her eyes were staring right through me. I almost smiled to myself. She had this way of making me feel vulnerable. No other woman could do that. I was so used to being the charmer, the player, the one holding all the cards, that when I met Wendy, I was thrown for a loop. She knew how to hurt me. Change me. Challenge me. That's what drew me to her.

And here she was again, making me feel like I was only half a man. Suffocating me with her... Wendy-ness. "I'm here for the divorce papers. It's been two mother fucking months. I'm tired of waiting on your ass."

And of course. It wasn't enough for her to make me feel weak. She had to drive the stake through my heart, too. "Oh... the uh... Right. I thought I sent those." God I was such a shitty liar around her.

"Yeah, well, you didn't." She sighed and looked around. "I really don't want this to drag out, Tracker. I'm not leaving without those papers in my hands."

The neighborhood had never seemed so deafenly silent as it did as I stood there in the doorway of my duplex, dangerously close to a woman I was never allowed to touch or love or want again. God, those eyes like stone. Like she felt nothing at all. We'd both been hurt, but her wounds had been so cleanly stitched you almost couldn't tell. I was the one that was still bleeding inside.

To my horror, I suddenly thought of Ellie, as her words echoed in my mind: _I'd give anything to have your strength._

I dropped my eyes to the cracked concrete porch and rubbed the back of my neck, leaning from side to side in discomfort. "Uh, yeah," I said. "I probably just... misplaced them or something. Lemme go look inside for a minute. I'll be right back."

I turned away from her, that bittersweet vision on my front steps, and crept back into the house with my burden of shame. As I shut the door behind me, I spotted Ellie at the window. She cowered slightly in embarrassment; she'd been watching everything through the blinds. Un-fucking-believable.

I felt my last threads of patience snap. "What the FUCK are you doing?" I yelled. Ellie's eyes grew wide with fear. It was the first time I'd ever screamed at her with any real conviction. I wasn't in the mood for her twisted little girl games this time. The thought of her watching such a dark moment of mine with her little baby doll eyes made my skin crawl. She might have been able to slither her way into every other moment of my shithole life, but no way was I going to let her near this one. Not Wendy. I wouldn't let her have Wendy. I needed this to stay unstained by Ellie.

"Get the fuck out of my sight, Ellie." She stood there, frozen, her lips perched on the edge of words I didn't want to hear. "I said, GET THE FUCKOUT OF MY SIGHT!"

She let out a small squeak and scurried away to her bedroom. I exhaled slowly and turned to the table by the door. Beneath weeks worth of accumulated junk was the crumpled manila envelope that held all of the signed, completed divorce papers. They'd been sitting on that table for two months, stamped and labeled with Wendy's address, waiting to be mailed. But they hadn't gone anywhere. I couldn't do it. I knew it was what we wanted, what we both needed, but I just wasn't strong enough to let go. I guess I thought if I left the papers on that table long enough, they'd get buried so deep under the shit of life that I could forget about them altogether. Forget they'd ever existed. Forget I'd ever been married. Forget I'd ever even met that beautiful, dangerous woman.

I breathed and reached for the papers. I slipped back outside where Wendy was waiting. There was that empty space between us again, and as I clutched the envelope in my hand, I tried to break it. I tried to catch her eye, see if there was any feeling left in them. Any love left in them. That's what I was looking for, I realized, and the thought scared me. I still needed Wendy to love me. I still needed her.

"Are they signed?" she asked.

I nodded and took a step towards her. She held out her hand for the envelope, but I didn't loosen my grip at all. I wasn't ready to hand them over. I tried prying into her eyes once more but I saw nothing. Emptiness. She was gone from me. God I loved her.

"Are you going to give them to me or are you going to make me stand here all day?" she said. And extraordinarily enough, she wasn't even being a bitch about it. There was a light, sarcastic quality to her tone. She smiled slightly. It was worse than her being cold. It meant she was so completely over me that she didn't even need to hold on to bitterness. She could laugh it off.

I wanted to smile back but I couldn't. She was so close to me now. I could smell her. I wanted to taste her. I swallowed my pride; I'd never done that before in my life. "We don't have to... we don't have to end it like this, Wen," I said, so soft it was almost a whisper. Only Wendy could make me feel so fragile. "We shouldn't end it like this. We should talk. You could stay for awhile and we could just talk."

She let out a slow, cautious sigh. Her eyes softened. Her smile faded and she bit her lip. "There's really nothing left to say, Tracker." She reached for the papers.

"I know." My fingers held tight to the envelope. "But... stay." I touched her hair.

She stepped back, standing firmly against me. She looked at the ground. She laughed tiredly. "Jesus. This is why I didn't want to come here, you know. I knew you'd try and make it hard." She inhaled and brought her gaze back to me. "But I'm not going to let you hurt me anymore. Just give me the papers."

Hurt her? She didn't know the half of hurting. She'd burned a hole right through me, knocked me to the absolute bottom. I had nothing left. I put the papers in her outstretched hand. She walked away and didn't once look back. I threw my cigarette to the ground and stomped it out.

When I went back inside, I slammed the door so hard that a picture fell off the wall. I heard it crack but didn't bother to check. I grabbed my beer from the coffee table and sulked off to my room. I sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the dingy beige carpet beneath my feet. I focused so completely on the floor, hoping my eyes would see nothing but dull beige. But hard as I tried, I couldn't wipe the image of Wendy walking away from my mind. I liked it better the first time, when it was me walking away. When Wendy was still right where I left her, waiting for me when I decided to be a man and come back.

I tried to think to myself when it was that I'd pissed away all my chances. Nothing precise came to memory. All I knew was that it was all gone now. I tilted back the brown bottle in my hand and sucked the bitter liquid down hard. I was alone.

I heard the door creak open but didn't bother to look up. I knew it was her. "Get lost," I said, still staring at the floor. "I'm not in the mood for your shit tonight." I tried to sound as pissed off as I possibly could, but instead it just came out sad and pathetic. I was sad and pathetic. I was on the verge of crying, and the last person in the world I wanted to be with at that moment was that red-headed cunt. I wanted her far, far away.

So of course, she came closer. She sat down beside me and put her hand on the bottle of beer. "Don't do this," she said, her voice as delicate as glass. "This isn't what you need."

I laughed. I felt the tears sting and slip down my face. "Go fuck yourself, Ellie."

She took the bottle out of my hands. She was shaking. I was shaking. Why did she think she could sit so close to me? "I already am fucked. You know that. What I'm worried about right now is you. Why the fuck do you want to do this to yourself? Didn't you learn anything from your parents?"

"My parents were drunks. I'm not a drunk. And you, you're a dumbfuck two-faced whore who doesn't know SHIT about anything or anyone. So could you please, please, PLEASE leave me the hell alone? Jesus. Five minutes, Ellie. Five FUCKING minutes. Can I not have five minutes with YOU not around? Stop pretending like you have a place here or something. You don't. This isn't your fucking house, and this isn't your fucking problem. Fuck."

I covered my eyes and turned away from her. I was choking. I needed to scream. I was falling apart and I needed a drink and why the FUCK was she still sitting there? Whatever it took, I wasn't going to let myself break down and cry in front of her.

She started snapping at the rubber band on her wrist as she bit her lip and stared at her knees. "I'm sorry," she said. "I'm sorry." She said it over and over again, mumbling pathetic cliches and looking helpless. She kept watching me, hoping I'd say something. I couldn't speak. I had nothing to say.

A single tear dripped gently down her face and I thought, well fuck, if she's going to cry, I'm going to punch her in the face. But she held it in. She exhaled. She laid her face hard against my shoulder. "I'm sorry," she mumbled again into the cotton of my shirt. She stretched out her thin fishnet-covered arms and held on to me, face pressed against me, breathing hard but not crying. She lifted her lips from my sleeve and leaned in closer, trailing her mouth softly into the nook of my neck and shoulder. Her hands moved gently down my side, barely there at all and yet covering me completely.

"God," I breathed out.

She brought her hand to my cheek and pulled me towards her, and I kissed her, without even the slightest hint of remorse. I was hurting so bad inside I couldn't stand it; the blood was pounding in my head and I was just trying hard not to think about what I was doing. I kept kissing her, fast, hard, and careless, as she pressed her body against mine. She fell into me as easily as stacked spoons, as if this was the way she'd planned it from the moment she first saw me. She wrapped her bare legs around my middle, drawing her lips down my neck and back again, easing her hands down my back, rendering me senseless with the way she touched me. Her whole body was silk. I slid my hands slowly up her thighs, touching the tantalizing flesh that had been eating away at my thoughts for weeks, and snuck into the hidden corners beneath her strategic black skirt.

A gentle yelp escaped her lips and fluttered right past my ear.

"Fuck," I said, opening my eyes once more and looking at her. Cold sweat broke out on my forehead. I shoved her off of me without thinking twice. "Fuck, fuck, fuck." I jumped off the bed and started pacing.

Ellie tugged at the hem of her black skirt. "God, I'm sorry. I didn't mean..."

"No!" I stared hard at her for a single moment, trying to balance the confusion and fury and hurting I felt all at once. "No, man, don't give me that shit! You DID mean! This is... God, this is fucking crazy.I can't TAKE this shit anymore!" I took in a deep, fuming breath and stormed out the door, despite Ellie's half-assed mumbling and ever-echoing "I'm sorry"'s. I grabbed my jacket from the back of the armchair and my keys from the table. I slammed the door hard behind me as I ran out of the house, hoping to God I would never have to come back.


	8. eight

_FYI: This is not the last chapter. I know I said in the beginning it would end at eight chapters, but since then the storyline has changed and lengthened a bit._

o o o o o o o

I got shitfaced. I've always been hopelessly uncreative like that. I could have chased after the woman I loved, made some cheesy speech and given her cheesy red roses and sworn I couldn't go on living without her. Or I could have stayed home and had mad hot barely-legal sex with my brother's slut girlfriend. I could have, at the very least, gone and sat under a willow tree and smoked a joint and communed with the spirits while I sorted out my thoughts or some hippie shit like that. But no, I've always been a simple guy, and so after storming out of my own house, I quite simply went to the Broken Dollar and drank myself into a stupor. And after the manager kicked me out, I called Clint, and we went back to his apartment where I continued to drink myself stupid. I stayed shitfaced for three whole days, swimming through an ever-deepening abyss of sad, sad thoughts.

I was tired of feeling. Tired of thinking. Most of all, tired of being Tracker Cameron. I tried so hard, through the waterfalls of alcohol pouring through my head, to think of one solitary thing worth living for. I drew a blank. My whole life was like that. One big blank space, waiting to be filled. Waiting for the gun to go off and the real game to begin. I felt like I was just floating around in limbo, attached to nothing and no one, with prospects of nothing better on the horizon. My life was still waiting to be lived, and I didn't want to be the one to live it.

I wanted Wendy. I wanted it to be one of those Saturday mornings where I'd lie in bed with her and eat Frosted Flakes. She'd put on the Rolling Stones or Bowie or Todd Rungren, the vinyl albums she loved so much, and we'd talk about the water bill and Charles Bukowski and the movie we saw last weekend. It seemed like we never ran out of things to talk about together. I wondered why I now had so much trouble thinking of things to say in conversation. It was like things were only interesting when Wendy was around. Like things only meant anything when Wendy was around.

Why was it that I only understood these things when it was too late?

Now I was nowhere again, living for nothing the way I'd always done before I met her. Even Sean, the only thing that had once vaguely given my life purpose, now seemed out of my reach. I'd always tried to entertain the idea that I could teach him a thing or two, give him the kind of advice Mom and Dad had been too wasted to give, make his walk of life a little smoother than mine had been. But I hadn't done any of that, had I? Sean's life was just as fucked up as mine and no matter what I did, I couldn't save him from the Cameron fate.

Forever is such an empty word. I thought I'd been married to Wendy forever; thought I'd been taking care of Sean forever; thought I'd been a man in this world forever. But when three days drunk in Clint and Phil's apartment felt like forever, I began to realize that I'd barely even scratched the surface of what forever really was. I was only twenty-four. Twenty-four, and I'd already lost everything I'd ever given a shit about. I was over before I'd even begun. When you looked at it like that, God it was pathetic.

It was on the morning of the third day that my body finally said, "Jesus FUCK, Tracker," and crashed. I slept for forever, I guess, and let my thoughts untangle themselves in my dreams. I woke up sometime before dusk and lie on Clint's bed-less mattress, watching the sun sink slowly and thinking to myself, _God, where the fuck do I go from here?_

And wouldn't you know, I heard her voice. I thought I was imagining shit at first, but as I listened for a few minutes longer I knew there was no mistaking it. She was laughing in the next room.

I soon found myself on my feet, still a little dizzy, stumbling into the living room. Phil was sitting in an orange plastic chair, hunched over his wobbly coffee table and laughing as he did a line of speed. On the couch opposite of him sat two familiar teenagers. One of them was Nameless Blonde Yuppie, who had come a long way down hill since I'd seen him last. The curls and pookah shells were but a faded memory, and in their place sat a greasy, black-clad, emo skeeve. Beside him, looking just as dark and complicated as always, was Ellie.

"Ah, crap," I mumbled tiredly, rubbing the exhaustion from my face.

"Oh," said Ellie, smiling nervously. "You're awake now."

"Yeah. I'm awake now. What the fuck are you doing here?" I took a step forward, finding it a little hard to maintain my balance, and smacked Phil across the back of the head. "And what the fuck are you doing with speed? You know these two little shits are minors, don't you?" Patience, at this point in time, was not my strong point.

Phil looked up at me with a mischievious but innocent smile. A little kid with his hand caught in the cookie jar. "It's cool, man." He waved his hands fluidly through the air, using his hand-motions to somehow assure me that it was in fact cool. "This is Spinner, man, my sister's boyfriend. He deals for me sometimes. And this... this is the one.. you know... with the hair..." He motioned vaguely in Ellie's direction before shrugging and forgetting was he was talking about completely. I might have been pissed if I didn't have such an ungodly headache.

Exhaustedly, I looked over at Ellie. "Why are you here?" It was hard to look her in the eye.

She tugged at her sleeves and shifted her eyes downward, that oh-so-familiar nervous habit of hers. Strands of red and black slipped in front of her face and blocked her eyes from view. "I ran into Spinner at school yesterday, he said he'd seen you here. I thought I should come check on you. Sean's worried."

I breathed. She was pulling the Sean card, knowing that it was the only guilt strong enough to eat through my steel walls of apathy. I mean, if left to my own devices, how much longer could I have stayed in that black hole, feeling sorry for myself? Forever. But when I thought of Sean, it was hard to be numb. He was strong and independent and he acted like he didn't need me, but underneath this battle between us, he was still vulnerable. He was still my little brother. I still couldn't walk away from him. Sean made me... give a shit. He made me feel, even when I didn't want to anymore.

I looked at Ellie, a cruel reminder of the reality that waited outside for me, as she waited perched on the couch expectantly. I combed my fingers through my sweat-tangled hair and exhaled heavily. "Yeah," I said. "Yeah, all right. I guess we'd better head home."

She raised her eyebrows and remained frozen for a moment, a look on her face that clearly said, "Wow, that was easy." But after a moment's pause she simply accepted it and nodded, grabbing the set of car keys that rested right beside Phil's pile of speed. She waved to Spinner and turned for the door. I trailed behind her, slowly clearing my head and drifting back into a state of full-consciousness.

"Hey, kid," I said to Spinner before following Ellie out the door. I pointed towards Phil, who was quickly becoming spun out of this world. "Make sure he doesn't go anywhere. Or do anything stupid." Spinner glanced at Phil, then looked back at me with a resoundingly blank face before finally nodding with a shrug.

The sky was quickly fading from lavender to deep blue as I slid into the passenger's seat of Ellie's car. Moody girl music seeped through the stereo as she drove away from Clint and Phil's apartment. I tapped on the arm rest uneasily.

"Can I smoke in here?" I asked.

"Yeah, sure," she said.

Suprisingly warm air met my face as I rolled down the window and lit a cigarette. Sweet carbon monoxide hit my lungs and slowly put my mind in a clearer, more comfortable state. I found myself staring at the series of rips and holes in Ellie's jeans, remembering those same legs wrapped around me.

"Jesus Christ," I laughed softly.

"What?" said Ellie, not taking her eyes from the road. She was either a very cautious driver or she didn't want to look at me. Ellie didn't strike me as cautious.

I shrugged. I didn't know where to begin. I exhaled a stream of cigarette smoke and watched it dance out the window. "I wish you'd leave, Ellie." I was never good with subtlety. "I've got too much to deal with right now and I can't handle you on top of it all."

She was silent for a moment, carefully chewing her thoughts. "I don't have anywhere to go," she said. I couldn't tell if it was a statement or a question.

"Yeah, I know. I heard. Am I supposed to feel sorry for you or something? I mean, I know I can be a dick, but I'm not being totally unreasonable here. I've been trying real hard to muster up some sympathy or something, but you're not really throwing me a bone here. I mean, what the fuck? The other day you were like, all over me, which was really fucked up by the way, and today you were huddled around a pile of speed and making nice with that blonde douchebag I already caught you with once. You're a whore and you're giving my little brother the shaft. Can you give me one good reason why I should let you live in my house?"

She sighed, clutching the steering wheel, and looked at me. Doll eyes, sad smile. She shrugged. "I don't have anywhere to go."

We rode the rest of the way without speaking.

She pulled up in front of the duplex, into that same spot where I'd come so accostomed to seeing her beat-up car sitting. She put the car in park but didn't cut off the ignition. We sat unmoving, contemplating one another's silence, listening to the motor idling and the stereo on low.

"If you really want me to leave, I'll leave," she said, popping her rubber band and not meaning a word she was saying.

I didn't really want her to leave. But I really needed her to. I didn't say anything.

She took my silence as an opportunity to continue, to plead her case and save her ass. "But I mean, I haven't been cheating on Sean..." I started to shake my head and laugh in disbelief, but she cut me off. "I haven't. Spinner and I were just a thing like, forever ago, when Sean and I were having some problems, and then he got with Manny and we broke it off. I haven't been with anyone since then. And I haven't been stoned since the night you found me, either. And I know I still cut and I know it freaks you out but I'm _trying _I swear..."

"Ellie," I said. I took the last drag of my cigarette and flicked the butt out the window. I rolled the window back up and sighed, rubbing my temple, pooling my thoughts. "It isn't about that. I mean, you're a messed up kid, but when it really comes down to it, do you think I give a fuck about any of that shit you do? No. What this is about is what happened the other day."

She had a stunned kind of look in her eyes, searchlight hitting a prisoner just as they tried to jump the wall. "I... didn't mean to kiss you." She tucked her hair behind her ear and put her hands in her lap. "I didn't know what to say or do so I just... It was an accident."

Things like that were never accidents. Mistakes, maybe, but never accidents. No one ever kisses without thinking, without purpose. "I don't care what it was. It was stupid and it was weird and it can't happen again. It's too weird for me, Ellie. For once in my life I want to aim for something vaguely resembling normal, you know?" I found myself instinctively reaching for another cigarette, my head growing heavy with the usual burden of exhaustion and frustration. I turned to her with eyes that were sincere and pleading. I'm sure she was used to me giving her orders all the time, but this was the first time I held before her an honest request. "Can we please just try for normal? Can you help me out here? Please?"

Ellie nodded weakly. "Okay."

We left the car and went into the house. Sean was at the kitchen table, eating store-brand Fruit Loops and scratching away with pen and paper. He looked up briefly, rolled his eyes and chuckled coldly, then went back to what he was doing. While Ellie strategically slipped into her room, a sanctuary from the storm that was about to erupt, I trudged into the kitchen and sat in the seat beside my brother. He had no reaction to my presence.

"Whatcha working on?" I asked.

"Chemistry," he answered.

I nodded as I pulled the ash tray on the table closer to me. "Sounds like a bitch." I'd dropped out before I'd ever gotten to Chemistry. "You know you always surprise me, Sean."

"Really? Because you never surprise me." He was trying so hard not to look at me. Nobody could pull off the cold shoulder the way Sean could. When he was mad at you, you felt it all through your body. He was ice. I guess that was the trade-off, though, for dealing with his anger problems. Instead of exploding like he used to, he kept it inside, refined it, isolated its potency into a few carefully-calculated blows.

I sighed as I placed my cigarette into one of the nooks of the amber ash tray. I walked to the cupboard to get a bowl and helped myself to what were apparently called Fruity-Os, then rejoined my brother at our worn kitchen table. I stared into the swirling pool of milk and colored rings, soaking in Sean's icy silence, trying to remember how to breathe.

"Things are really fucked up right now," I said, scooping the cold cereal into my spoon.

Sean exhaled, buying himself a moment to think. He was trying to decide whether or not he wanted to open the door to me. "When are they not?"

"Not always." I swallowed a mouthful of Fruity-Os, letting their not-quite-Fruit-Loops aftertaste coat the inside of my mouth. "I mean, life's hard... but not like this. I can deal with alot, Sean, but I can't deal with this. I feel like my life is falling apart."

Sean set down his pen and looked at me with his uncertain, unfeeling eyes. My wounds were completely visible now. The truth was naked in the wind, plain as day before us. Everything that had been true about Sean and I in the past was now in reverse. He was the tough one, the unreadable one, the one who let the hurting roll off him like water. I was the one who didn't know up from down. It only took me saying it out loud to realize it.

After the silence had played out, Sean smiled. "You might start feeling better if you bought some better cereal, man." He reached out and picked up the box, laughing at the rainbow cartoon bird that I'm sure in no way was a rip-off of Toucan Sam. "I mean, what the fuck _is _this?"

"Hey, fuck you, man. I don't see _your _paycheck dishing out Fruit Loop money..."

And for awhile there, everything was normal. We laughed, we called each other names, we ate cheap cereal. Sometimes, when the world is crumbling, that's all you can do.


	9. nine

_AN: This chapter contains... somewhat graphic content. Nothing over the top, but graphic all the same. Please proceed with that caution in mind._

o o o o o o

It's funny, but sometimes everything in your world just seems to get completely out of hand. Everything's going to hell, and you just can't take it anymore, and you feel like any day now it's all going to crash and burn. You always expect something earth-shattering to happen, but it never does. Instead, life does what it always does. It goes on. Life is brilliantly anti-climactic like that.

And so just when it seemed like my life had run off the tracks, everything went back into motion again, rhythmic and predictable as always. My dysfunctional family and I slipped into a routine that was as close to normal as we could manage. Everything was still fucked up beneath the surface, but there was at least that shell of normality. Warmer weather was in full swing, and somehow that seemed to lighten the mood of our heavy house. I was still miserable, Sean was still angry, and Ellie and I were still dealing with the awkwardness of our brush with lust, but we kept at the grind. Work, school, TV, cereal, light conversation, arguments over bathroom time. We tried to keep life as uncomplicated and uninteresting as possible.

It was a Saturday in April when I woke up to the sounds of slow, rumbling thunder and a continuous drizzle of heavy rain. Bleak, ethreal green light filtered through the blinds into my dark room. I flopped over onto my side and stared at the alarm clock that read 3:16. I'd worked a double the day before, and my long sleep had been a welcomed and beautiful thing. It was painful to crawl out of the comfort of the disheveled sheets; I could have stayed there all day. But I had to piss, and I was craving breakfast, and try as I might, I never could sleep through a storm.

The house felt somehow more inviting than usual as it resonated with the sounds of rain. It was the kind of gray, sleepy day that blanketed you in a pleasant stupor. As I sauntered into the kitchen I caught a glimpse of Ellie lying on the couch in cotton shorts and a black tank top, scarfing Sean's M&M stash as she watched cartoons. Watching her red hair pour over the side of the couch as she placed tiny candies between her lips, I suddenly realized that chocolate candy at three in the afternoon was the ideal breakfast.

"Shove over and pass the candy," I said, nudging her leg with my bare foot. She lifted her head of unruly hair and looked at me with a pair of weary brown eyes.

"I'm comfortable," she whined.

"Yeah, well, I'm hungry," I countered. "And I pay the rent. So scoot."

With a soft groan of irritation, she pulled in her extended legs and made room for me to sit down. Once I'd settled in, she stretched them back out again and rested them casually across my lap. As if we were that intimate of friends, that we could just lay on each other and be completely nonchalant about it. As if the last time we were this close, we weren't tearing into each other like hungry dogs. As if we were both mature enough to ignore that spark between us. I sighed, but said nothing as I reached my hand into the giant bag of M&Ms. We watched cartoons together in comfortable, contented silence as the volume of candy in the bag gradually decreased. Ellie continually glanced back at the clock on the microwave, and after awhile her fidgeting started to bug me.

"What's wrong?" I asked. "Pizza guy running late?"

Ellie shook her head distractedly. "I'm worried."

"Worried about what?"

"Sean hasn't come home yet."

I shrugged as I poured another handful of multi-colored candy balls into my mouth. "Yeah? How long's he been out?"

"Since last night. Someone called here for him, and then he said he had to go take care of something. He never came home." She began to nervously chip away the purple nail polish on her fingers.

I chewed contemplatively and exhaled as I absorbed this knowledge. I wasn't too unsettled by it; Sean and I were so rarely home at the same time that his absence wasn't overhwhelming to me. "Sean's a big kid," I decided. "I'm sure he's got it under control."

Ellie lifted her legs off of me and pulled them to her chest. She brushed her hair out of her face and nestled her chin between her knees. "Yeah. Sure."

The rest of my afternoon was just as blissfully uneventful. Ellie wandered off after awhile and started doing things around the house, leaving me free reign of the couch and the remote. I watched mindless Grade F television and finished off Sean's candy while the storm barreled on unceasingly. I was content to waste the day away on the couch in my boxers, hiding from the storm-worn world outside. Ellie did chores all day, pacing around the house with a kind of subtle nervousness, but I never once got up. I didn't even think twice about Sean.

Sometime later Ellie waltzed into the living room, plopped a grilled cheese sandwich on a paper plate into my lap, and crawled onto the couch beside me. She put two cold cans of Coca Cola on the coffee table and ripped open a bag of potato chips without explanation. Grateful but slightly bewildered, I took a bite of my sandwich.

"I'm feeling the Suzy Homemaker vibe today," I teased, popping open my soda. "But, honey, no umbrellas for the drinks?"

"Funny, Tracker," she said through bites of sandwich. "I can't even make a sandwich without having you rag on me. You really get kick out of torturing me, don't you?"

"Yeah, pretty much."

She fought a smile and rolled her eyes and we continued to eat. Ellie licked the salt from her fingers every time she put a chip into her mouth, and with every other chew, it seemed, she glanced back at the clock again. Lick, chew, glance. Lick. Chew. Glance. She was unsettled, and that unsettled me.

"Ellie, chill," I commanded. "You're killing me here."

She dropped her eyes and licked her fingers once more. "Sorry. I was just thinking." She looked at the clock again.

I sighed and scratched the back of my head. "And would you stop looking at the clock? Jesus. It hasn't changed in the past thirty seconds. Just stop worrying about Sean, all right? I don't know where the fuck he is but I'm sure he's fine. The dude's gone for a few hours and you're freaking out. Since when do you even give a shit, anyway?"

She narrowed her eyes at me and drew her legs closer to her body. "He _is _my boyfriend, you know. And he's _your_ brother. You don't find it even the slightest bit alarming that he was out all night and never called?"

"No. No I don't, because Sean's a dude, and a teenager, and a _Cameron_, and having been all those things myself, I'm not surprised at all that we don't know where the fuck he is. It happens. You know, you don't know Sean as well as you think you do." It was happening again. She was getting under my skin again. I sighed and reached for my pack of cigarettes from the coffee table.

Ellie's eyes flared with hurt as she pouted angrily at me. "Oh, really? You don't think so? How would you even know, Tracker? You haven't even been here the past year."

And thank God for that, I thought to myself. How could I ever have dealt with an entire year of Ellie? I took a few a drags of my cigarette and shook my head at her. "No. No, I haven't. You know why? Because Sean can take care of himself. All that time I was in Alberta, I knew Sean was gonna be okay. And you know, the _really _funny part is..." I paused and took a long drag, and then continued, waving my cigarette unintentionally in her face, "I knew he had a girlfriend, and I knew how crazy he was about you, and I thought, well that's great, she'll make sure he does all right. But now that I've met you, I can't _believe _Sean didn't go fucking crazy on his own. You are... the most _unbelievable _person I have ever met."

She took a few quick, sharp, angry breaths, staring me down with all Hell burning in her eyes. She pursed her lips a few times to speak before finally squinting bitterly and shaking her head. "Yeah?" she said. "Well... fuck you."

She gave the orange rubber band around her wrist a few good pops and chugged a gulp of her Coke. I exhaled and stared before shrugging and taking another bite of my sandwich. I mean, I couldn't very well argue with that.

She let out a troubled groan, tugging her fingers through her hair. "Is there a reason you hate me so much?" she asked. "I mean, just out of curiosity. What did I ever do to you?"

I stopped midchew and sighed tiredly. I looked at her as she waited expectantly for my response, and shook my head. I swallowed. "It's not that I hate you. Really. It's just... I don't know, Ellie. You get on my nerves. I just get the feeling that everything that comes out of your mouth is bull shit. And that's annoying."

Her brow furled and she slid closer to me, tilting her head in a pleading kind of way. She spoke softly. "But that's not true. It's really not. I mean, fuck, everybody lies, Tracker. I'm not a bad person. I do the best I can. Why don't you ever believe that I'm trying?"

She was so close to me, eyes gleaming with innocence. Bull shit gently pouring from her lips as usual. Why did she keep doing this to me? Why did I have to deal with this? I wanted to look away but I couldn't. I cracked a hard smile. "Because you don't try, Ellie. You know you don't. And you don't have to put on this little show in front of me, because I've seen your kind a hundred times before and I know what you're about." I did know, all too well, and that's why I was trying so desperately hard not to fall into this trap. "You're a selfish little bitch and you pretend to care about Sean but the only thing you give a flying fuck about is _you._"

She swallowed and trembled a little bit. Maybe she wanted to cry, but I couldn't tell. Maybe she was faking. Everything about Ellie was misleading. She just shook her head, looking at me with hard eyes. "That's not true."

"Isn't it, though? Sean doesn't even know about half the things you do. You're hiding everything from him. You cheated on him, for Christ's sake. And what about that one day, Ellie? What about me and you? You don't think that was wrong? Sean doesn't mean shit to you."

She exhaled. "Sean means everything to me, okay? It's just that..." She closed her eyes and popped her rubber band. She opened them up again and glared at me. She was breaking. "You know what? Fuck you. I make mistakes. I'm not going to deny that. I think you're hot, and that day, you were lonely, and I saw an opportunity, okay? I just wanted to fucking touch you. I'm a bad person. Is that what you want to hear? It's true. I'm a bad person. I made a mistake. But I'm over it now. It's not going to happen again." She turned away.

In the depths of my conscience, I needed her to say that. I needed her to condemn those moments we'd touched each other, so that I could move on and ignore it. But on a shallow, more potent level, I was aching. I didn't want her to be over it. I wanted her to be just as consumed by it as I was. I wanted her to be haunted, the way I'd been haunted for weeks, by that kiss and that skin and that loss of all control. I wanted her to say it, so that I wouldn't have to be the one to admit to how bad I wanted it.

I reached forward, pushing the mask of red and black hair out of her face. She looked at me. I put my hand on her bare shoulder, realizing suddenly this was one of the few times I'd ever seen her without her signature long sleeves. The scars on her arms, some barely there and others fresh and new, stared up at me. I stroked her shoulder softly, our gaze unbroken. We had one of those silent conversations with our eyes, breathing a little faster than usual and not moving at all. Now, this is just my interpretation, but I think it went something like:

_Hey, Tracker, why the fuck are you touching me?_

_Iunno._

_Oh, really? NOW who's being a selfish bitch?_

_Yeah, yeah, I know. So fucking sue me. You said I was hot._

_I know. Please don't kiss me._

_Why not?_

_Because I'm going to let you._

I slid my fingers through her hair, twisting the red strands and pulling her closer to me. "Damn it, Ellie," I said, slowly meeting her lips. I could feel her shaky breathing as her lips moved hungrily against mine. When she opened her mouth I knew it was over, gone to hell, completely out of control. We weren't going to be able to stop it. It was kind of like... like you come into the kitchen and you find this fucking amazing chocolate cake just sitting there. And you might have just eaten like, a really big meal or something and you're not even hungry, but damn it, you're going to eat a piece of that cake. Because it's there. And it's _cake_. It tastes good. Ellie tasted good. And she was there. It was there, between us. We were hungry. We had to have it.

So much for normal.

She was feathers in my arms as I held her, kissing the supple skin of her shoulder. I moved down, down, across her chest, down to neckline of her tank top, down into the nook between her breasts. She sighed as I cupped them in my hands, moving my lips across her tender skin. I kissed her on the mouth again as my hands wandered beneath the thin cotton of her clothes, building up my anticipation and sinking into the ecstasy of the freedom I had at last. That's the real appeal of sex, you know. The freedom. All boundaries are erased. I could ignore the stipulations of reality, the reality that told me I wasn't allowed to touch Ellie. I could break the rules and touch her anywhere I wanted to, explore every corner of her skin. Sex was freedom, and I was tired of standing outside Ellie's walls. I began to peel the clothing off her body.

She closed her eyes and panted softly as I undressed her, her body going limp and handing over all control. I waited for her to say stop, or for my brain to say stop, but for some reason that moment never came. Piece by piece the layers that covered her were removed, showing me the flesh I'd fantasized about, however unwillingly, since the night I'd seen her stroll slutfully into the convenient store with Spinner. She looked somewhat ghostly, stretched out across that puke green couch, naked and staring at me with those eerie hazel eyes. She watched as I took off my own clothes, her face strangely emotionless. You would expect her to be tough, fiesty. The kind of girl who'd take off your pants, claw at your skin, bite your tongue. But she wasn't. Without her clothes, that smart-mouthed, self-assured persona was rubbed away. I realized immediately she wasn't the kind of girl who took control, the kind of girl I'd assumed she was for a long time. A naked, thin, delicate girl was sprawled out in front of me, legs open and dangling over the side of the couch, staring with a pair of eyes that said simply, "Go."

I guess guilty sex is the best kind. I tried not to think too much, but it was impossible. Everytime I looked down at her sweaty face, mouth open and red hair strewn across it, I remembered that this was Ellie. Ellie that I hated. Ellie that was my little brother's girlfriend. Ellie that was only sixteen years old. Sean might walk in at any minute, I thought. Her drunken mother might walk in at any minute. _My _drunken mother might walk in at any minute. The whole fucking world might just walk in and see this, see our crime, see her young legs wrapped so tightly around me, hear her scream, watch me shove my tongue down her throat and squeeze her all over with no remorse. And those thoughts just made me want it more. She fit so perfectly in my embrace, whispering my name again and again as we throbbed rhythmically against the decayed couch. We fell into each other so fearlessly. We'd both wanted it for too long to be timid. We took everything we could, while we could. The rain sang endlessly outside, slamming against every wall of my cheap house. It tasted so wrong I never wanted it to be over.

"Tracker," she breathed, clutching my shoulders and gently sucking on my neck. "Tracker, god..."

I pushed into her harder, watching her inhale sharply, and hated myself inside. _You are a bad person,_ I said to myself. But that didn't stop it from feeling so good.

When it was over, and we were spent, there was nothing to say. We laid close to one another, breathing heavily, speaking with our eyes again. _I wish we hadn't let that happen, _I told her. She nodded with apologetic eyes and grabbed me by the hair, pulling me towards her to kiss her. Kissing Ellie was like a rush of oxygen-heavy blood to my head. It was a jolt-start to my brain, tasting the forbidden, inciting my hunger. Just like fucking cake, man, I swear. It's bad for you, but it tastes better than all the rest.

In the afterglow that followed, she laid across the couch, legs spread over my lap, the same way we'd watched TV all morning. Only, you know, naked. I trailed my fingers down her side and to her hips, petting her gently. I smoked a cigarette with my free hand. We listened to the rain and the creaking ceiling fan. We didn't look at each other. I wondered what she was thinking. I wondered what I was thinking. The full extent of my actions had not yet settled into my brain, and for that I was grateful. All I could be at that moment was bewildered. How fucking weird was this? And at the same time, how fucking typical of me. I was always taking a few steps too far over the line that separated "okay" and "fucked up."

And all at once, fear consumed me. I heard Sean's key in the door.

_Fuck._

Things had never moved so fast in all my life. A lightning streak of naked Ellie rolled off of me and zipped into her bedroom. I searched desperately for my boxers and t-shirt and threw myself into them as fast as I could, accidently grazing my own arm with my cigarette in the process. Sean pushed open the door just as I had finished pulling my shirt over my head and plopped into a relaxed position on the couch. He trudged into the house, slowly shutting the door behind him. His clothes were soaked, and his eyes were tired. He walked into the living room and stopped in front of the couch.

"Hey," he said, scratching the back of his wet head. His voice was coated with exhaustion.

"Hey," I answered. I can't remember a more surreal moment in my entire life than that moment right there.

He blinked tiredly and collapsed next to me on the couch. "What's up?" he asked. He reached for the empty bag of M&Ms on the table, and frowned as he peaked inside. "You ate my candy."

I took a puff of my cigarette and looked at him with as much indifference as I could possibly fake. He had no idea. "Yeah. Sorry about that, bro. Blame Ellie, she's the one who got them out." Yes, for the love of God. Blame Ellie.

Sean nodded vaguely, as if he had far too much on his mind to give a shit about a bag of candy. He sighed, and gazed at me with guilty eyes. "I'm sorry, Tracker."

I exhaled a stream of smoke and stared at him, completely confused. "Sorry about what?"

He pulled off his soaked black hoodie and tossed it to the floor. Thank god we were all such horrible slobs and left shit on the floor all the time; Sean hadn't even noticed Ellie's scattered clothing. "I'm sorry I gave you such a hard time when Phil had to stay here for a few days. I shouldn't have been such an ass about it." He sighed again. "Last night there was this... problem. Ashley called me... Craig had some kind of tantrum or something and he hurt her... she didn't want to call the police. We took him to the hospital, and it's just been this huge, long ordeal..." He rubbed his tired eyes and paused to yawn. "What I'm saying is, Craig's my friend, and I didn't like what he was doing, but I understood that he needed help. And I had to be there for him. And when you wanted to help Phil, I didn't get it before. But now I do. And I just wanted to say I'm sorry for the things I said to you."

Too stunned to speak, I slowly reached out and put my hand on his shoulder. A hand that, only a few minutes earlier, had touched his naked girlfriend. I nodded to him. "Don't worry about it, man. It's cool."

Sean bit his lip and nodded. "Cool. Well... I'm beat. I didn't exactly get any sleep last night. I'm gonna hit the sack." He got off the couch and headed towards his bedroom, kicking his shoes off carelessly as he did so. He stopped when he reached his door. "And you totally owe me a bag of M&Ms, man."

I forced a laugh. "Whatever you say, Seany." He chuckled and went into his bedroom.

I exhaled and sunk deeper into the couch, feeling a metric ton of guilt press down on me. Sean had just apologized to me, for something that was completely insignificant to me at this point. And I had just fucked his girlfriend.

I am a shitty person.


	10. ten

When you let it happen once, it's a lapse in judgement. A fluke, an act of spontenaety. It's something you can leave behind and move on from, and always fall back on the excuse of, "Yeah, but I only did it _once._" When you let it happen twice, though, it becomes a full-blown mistake. At that point you've made a choice. You've willingly dove into the wrong. You're fully accountable for the blame. After the second time, it's hard to walk away from it. And when it happens more than twice... You're involved. You're in deep shit. You've lost control.

And that's exactly how it happened. After it happened the first time, there was a kind of lull. We didn't talk about it, but we both understood that it was wrong, that it shouldn't happen again. We kept our distance... for all of, I don't know, three days. And then we found ourselves alone together again. And we made the choice. With full knowledge of the consequences, we let it happen again. From there on out we were willing criminals, accountable for the blame and so much more. And we showed no sign of letting it stop. We were drawn to one another, tempted by the obvious fucked-up-ness of our lust, entranced by the most dangerous kind of curiosity. We would start looking for ways to just _happen_ to both be home when we knew Sean was gone. She would come into my room sometimes after Sean had gone to bed. We would give secrets glances and subtle touches when heads were turned. It turned into a game. It was dark and addicting. It thrilled and destroyed me simultaneously. But it passed the time, and I guess in the end, that's all I was really looking for.

It was getting closer to summer. The windows of my bedroom were open, and warm air crept inside. We were naked on top of the sheets, our minds dulled from sweat-worthy sex and summer heat. She laid across me, her hands folded on top of my chest. Her chin was rested on top of them as she stared right at me, smiling as I smoked my cigarette. Her eyes were glazed and gleaming with contentment.

"What?" I asked, exhaling a puff of smoke and breaking the warm silence. I cocked my eyebrows curiously at her. I reached forward and brushed a sweaty strand of red out of her smiling face. "What's so funny?"

She shook her head softly. "Nothing. I was just... looking at you. You're so gorgeous."

"Gorgeous?" I asked, chuckling. "Not the adjective I would have had in mind, but..." I shrugged and took a drag. I looked at her, wet red hair tousled all around, pale skin against my own, fingers idly caressing wrinkled sheets, sunlight dancing around her. _This _was gorgeous. It was pure electric fire on my tongue, a drug that hit me slow and heavy. Being with Ellie felt... edible. I could have eaten this entire moment. I wanted to feel this kind of high, always. I guess that was the force that pulled me ever-deeper into this sinful situation: the wanting. I was drowning in want. The excitement of Ellie, the freedom of her skin in my hands, was exactly what I needed to distract me from my shitty days.

She looked at the clock. "I should get dressed," she said with a sigh. I could feel her breath on my chest as she spoke. "I don't want to get up, though." She dropped her head and kissed my chest, closing her eyes. "Sometimes I feel like I'm sabatoging myself," she mumbled.

These were the kinds of comments she would make in the afterglow of sex. Being with Ellie wasn't only an amazing fuck; there were always these moments of spilled aching, inner most thoughts unchained, that followed. Deep, dark, philosophical conversations about the fucked up world and our meaningless part in it. Sex and the Meaning of Life, brought to you by Ellie Nash. When she wasn't wearing clothes, she wasn't just naked... she was _naked. _All of her scars were visible; she was defenseless. It was only in those moments that I could listen to her speak and know for sure she was telling the truth. In the beginning I was weary of these post-sex conversations; they dug too deep. Deeper than I was willing to go. But somehow they became required, and their intimacy was comforting.

I dropped my hand onto her head and combed my fingers through her sweaty hair. "Sabatoging yourself?" I said, rolling the words slowly over my tongue, soaking in the idea.

"I mean, my counselor tells me I have self-destructive tendencies... but it feels like more than that." She lifted her head again, propping it on my chest so that she could look right at me. "I feel like every time I start building my life up, getting things the way they need to be... I feel like, behind all that, I'm just tearing it down again. It's like I just, every time I get close to being okay, I get scared and try to fuck it up. Because it's easier to just keep fucking up than actually take care of myself. I give up before I even try. I'm not satisfied until I've ruined everything."

I pet her hair as I listened to her. Self-destructive _was_ kind of an understatement when it came to Ellie. She walked her life along a thin wire, teetering above a pit of fire. "I know what that feels like. I mean, I'm not exactly an over-acheiver, if you haven't noticed. I never even graduated high school. I dig living with just the bare minimum; that way I'm never disappointed." I shrugged as I paused to take a puff of my cigarette. "I guess that whole 'low-expectations' thing is sort of ingrained in trailer park kids since birth, though."

Ellie smiled at me. "Oh, us children of the drunks. So cynical and defeated. Fucked for life." She let out a groan-heavy sigh and rolled off the bed, grabbing her black panties and stepping into them. I watched with a slight smirk as she dressed herself, bewildered as always that we were here like this, doing this, enjoying this. "Guess I'll start some dinner," she said casually, slipping on her white t-shirt. "I'm thinking burgers tonight... sound good?"

I nodded. "Sounds good to me," I replied with a stream of exhaled smoke.

She pranced out of the room and went to work in the kitchen. When my cigarette was spent I got dressed and relaxed in front of the TV. When Sean came home awhile later, Ellie was doing her thing, I was doing mine. We were only a few feet away from each other, but we were comfortably oblivious to one another's presence. It was exactly what Sean would expect to see upon walking into the house. He had no idea that buried deeply under our surface thoughts were secret schemes for our next rendevous.

"Smells good," he said, shutting the door behind him. He walked into the kitchen and gave his girlfriend a "Honey, I'm home" kiss on the cheek before joining me in the living room. He propped his feet up on the coffee table and stared at the glowing boob tube. "Did I miss anything?" he asked absent-mindedly.

I shrugged. "Wouldn't know. Only woke up half an hour ago myself."

Sean laughed, I chuckled, and we continued watching TV together. I was amazed how easy lying to him had gotten.

o o o o o o

"You're getting laid," Phil observed a few days later, peering over his hand of cards at me with a sly grin. There were four of us, kicking it at his apartment one day for a game of cards. "That's what it is. You haven't been in this good a mood since that Jap girl dumped your ass." Clint and Spinner, slightly inebriated, hooted and hollered in agreement.

I proceeded to pelt Phil with a barage of pretzels, shaking my head in disapproval. "That Jap girl was my wife, dickhead," I informed him. "Would it kill you to be PC for once?"

Phil only laughed harder. "Whatever, man. I'm just curious _who_ the lucky lady is. Is it the blonde from Red Lounge? Ooh, wait. It's that Charli girl you used to date, right? Clint told me she came into the store the other day all, 'Uhhhh, Tracker, I miss you so much, I need your sweet juicy man meat!'" He laughed wildly, Spinner and Clint joining in.

I rubbed my temple and took a sip of my beer. "You guys are ridiculous. You know that, right? You act like you're still seventeen years old, for Christ's sake."

Spinner wrinkled his nose in confusion. "Dude, I _am _seventeen."

I sighed with heavy impatience. "Spinner, shut up." I laid down my cards. The rest of the guys followed in turn. I lost miserably.

Clint's eyes lit up mischieviously as he dealt out the next hand. He grinned at me. "Wait, I bet I know who it is. It's Slutty McRedhead, am I right? I mean how can you _live_ in the same house as that _ass_ and just, you know, NOT?" He continued his speech non-verbally, making gestures with his tongue and hands that would probably frighten small children.

I was discomforted. My secret fuck-buddy was not exactly something I needed these idiots knowing about; especially not Spinner, who went to school with my brother, who, oh yeah, was dating said fuck-buddy. I shook my head incredulously, as if such a suggestion was unthinkable. "You're a sick man, Clint," was all I said.

"Whatever man, don't act so high and mighty. You'd fuck her if you got that chance at least, wouldn't you? I mean, damn..." He puckered his lips together and shook his head, his eyes slightly gone in a fantasy.

Seeing as that wasn't a question I didn't feel even remotely comfortable answering, I tried to shift the conversation completely. "You know, if you're so interested, douchebag, why don't you ask Spinner. He knows about Ellie first hand. Isn't that right, Spin?"

Both Clint and Phil immediately whipped their heads around, staring at the teenage boy with sudden burning interest. Spinner slowly lifted his greasy hair from his cards, gazing back at the three of us with an unmistakable deer-caught-in-the-headlighst expression. He grinned shyly.

"Hot damn," said Clint. "You and Reddie hooked up?"

Phil gave him a suspicious eye. "You been messing around on my sister, man?"

"Whoa, no," said Spinner, holding out his hands in defense of his innocence. "It wasn't like that. Ellie and I messed around for awhile, but that was like, a few months ago, before I got with Manny. It was right after I broke up with my last girlfriend, Paige. It wasn't that big a deal, not really."

Clint hooted with boyish laughter. "'Wasn't that big a deal, not really,'" he mimicked, poking fun at Spinner's lame attempt at nonchalance. Clint reached over and gave the younger guy a punch in the shoulder. "Listen to junior over here, trying to play it cool. Like he gets fine ass all the time or something. What a joker. Spill it, kid. Is that kitten really as juicy as she looks?"

I found myself poised on the edge of my seat for some reason as I awaited Spinner's answer to that question. I mean, _I _already knew the answer first-hand. But nobody knew that I knew, least of all Spinner. It was a surreal and awkward position for me to be in. I took a sip of my beer and listened.

"Well, I mean, yeah, she's pretty good," Spinner said, his inexperience bleeding through his big-man talk. "She's kind of... wild, you know? Like, not crazy wild but... weird wild. Like, kinky. She wants everything to be weird and scary... she would always want to smoke pot beforehand. And she would like, _scream_..."

Clint and Phil guffawed and drooled as they listened to the details of Spinner and Ellie banging, stuffing their faces with pretzels and gummy bears and washing it down with warm beer. I tuned him out almost immediately, realizing this was all too fucked up for me to hear. Sex with Ellie had been such a secret, hidden thing for me until that point. As Spinner wove his less than eloquent tale in his childish, ADD-ridden speech, I was forced to realize that Sex With Ellie wasn't much of a secret at all. There were probably dozens of other idiot teenage boys like Spinner and depraved older guys like me that could recount Sex With Ellie in great detail. At that moment I was reminded of Ellie's scars; not just the visible marks on her arms that told the story of a troubled girl, but also the ones that lingered beneath the surface. Scars that marked her experience, her dangerous games, her self-destructive tendencies.

I guess I'd acquired such a flare for lying to those around me that I had barely even realized I was lying to myself, too. I had somehow been able to live with the assumption that Ellie was my secret. Ellie, to me, existed only in my bed, in our private world of hot sex and melancholy conversation. She was so vulnerable in that place. Not kinky, not a stoner, not a slut who wanted it weird and scary. I had temporarily forgotten her fucked-up existence in the outside world, but Spinner had reminded me of it. I felt sick to my stomach.

"Uh-oh," I said, wanting to put a stop to all of this. I lifted the plastic rings that remained from the six-pack we'd torn through. "Looks like Clint drank the last beer."

"Ah, fuck," said Phil, taking my bait like I knew he would. Spinner's story was abruptly ended with my announcement. Beer, after all, was far more essential that teenage sex stories.

"Guess Junior's going on an errand," I said. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a ten for Spinner to take. "Run on down to the Stop N Shop and get the big boys a sixer, Spin."

Spinner stood up and scratched the back of his greasy head. "Um, what if I get carded?"

Clint, Phil, and I laughed. "The Stop N Shop down the street? They won't card you, man, trust me. Now scram."

He took the money and scurried out the door, and the rest of us continued our card game and loud chatter. My hope was that by the time Spinner came back, the subject of Ellie would be long forgotten.

Needless to say, I was a tad tipsy by the time my evening of cards with the boys had come to an end. I fumbled to fit my key into the door of my duplex and stumbled inside when I at last got it to turn. Faintly familiar music, probably one of my CDs the kids had jacked, was playing low on the stereo. Stale cigarette smoke, unwashed dishes, and teenager-stench hung heavily in the hair of my dirty house. The lights were low, and Sean and Ellie were curled up on the couch, greedily sucking face. I felt a surreal pang in the pit of my stomach as I watched my brother's hands roam longingly over her clothes.

I tossed my keys onto the table and coughed loudly. Out of politeness, the two of them separated in the typical "caught in the act" way, pretending as though they were only sitting innocently. I fought to avoid looking at them; tried to keep my face as indifferent as always. I ducked quickly into my room, shutting the door behind me and rubbing the drunken tired from my face. I laughed quietly at myself. Why should I surprised to find them making out? Just what was it about seeing them together like that that made me so unsettled? I exhaled. It was one of those unbearable moments of reality, reminding me of who exactly I was: a deadbeat loser banging his little brother's girlfriend.

She came to my room again that night, and at first I was reluctant to let her sneak into my bed. Every time I tried to touch her I would see Sean in my head. Sean, kissing her so obliviously. How could he be so completely unaware of how dangerous she was? What would it do to him, if he ever found out about Ellie, creeping into my room for sex? Or running around with guys like Spinner, getting wasted with Craig? She was a runaway train, and we were all victims trapped under her wreckage.

But thoughts like that, thoughts of guilt and regret and consequence, quickly disappeared as always. My concerns were blurred by every piece of clothing she took off. I pulled her close to me for a hard kiss, slamming her hips against mine as I did. I was caught up in our game again, uninterested in anything but a good fuck. I shut out the outside world, as I so often do.

_Sometimes I feel like I'm sabotaging myself, _she had said. I knew that feeling all too well.


	11. eleven

May had finally come to an end and June was at our door. It was hard for me to believe that this time last year, I'd been a blissfully happy newlywed, living in Alberta with Wendy and making the most money I'd ever made in my young life. Now I was working my ass off night and day at a fucking convenient store, trying desperately to provide for two hopeless teenagers, one of whom I spent most of my energy lying to, and the other I spent the rest of my energy fucking. God sure does have a magnificent sense of humor.

The three of us were all home at the same time one evening, which was a fairly rare occasion. It was almost entertaining, all three of us on the couch, munching popcorn and laughing at bad television, together like one big happy fucking family. The phone rang, and I was closest, so I answered it. It was the shaky voice of a teenage girl. I handed the phone to Sean. Ellie and I listened with interest as he spoke urgently to the voice on the other end.

"Okay," he said. "Okay, don't worry. Just act normal. I'll be over there." He hung up the phone and saw that we were waiting expectantly for details, mouths hanging open pathetically like TV junkies waiting for the next episode. He sighed. "That was Ashley. She says Craig's been acting weird tonight and she thinks he might have blown off his meds."

Ellie stiffened. "Is everything okay?"

He nodded reassuringly. "Everything's fine, she just wants someone there just in case. It's probably nothing... you know Ashley overreacts sometimes."

She bit her lip. "Do you want me to come?"

Sean was already standing up and walking towards the door. "No, it's fine. You should stay here. If it's nothing, I'll be back in about an hour... and if Craig does have another episode, I don't want you to get caught up in it." He retreated a few steps and kissed her forehead before he left the house.

The living room settled into a slightly more quiet state, adjusting to having one less person. Ellie and I stared mindlessly at the glowing television. After several minutes of this lull, she glanced over at me. "Hey," she said conversationally. "You wanna... you know?"

Lethargically, I tore my head away from the TV and turned to her. I raised my eyebrows in disbelief. "What... now?" I asked.

She shrugged. "Eh. I mean, he's gone. We could. If you want to."

I chuckled incredulously. "You know what? Wow. You're like, a machine. I mean it's kind of hot, but damn..."

She blushed. "I was just _saying_..." She sighed and pulled her knees into her chest, sinking into a quiet state. I watched her for a moment as we sunk into silence again, the TV glow flashing against her face.

I smiled. "You know what, fuck this shit." I reached for the remote on the coffee table and turned the TV off. I climbed off the couch and grabbed Ellie's hand. "Come on, let's blow this joint. I am so sick of this fucking house."

She regarded me with raised eyebrows and a curious smile as I yanked her across the living room, throwing her leather jacket at her. "Um, and we're going _where_, exactly?"

I grabbed my keys from the table beside the door, still pulling her along. "Who knows. Who cares? Let's just get the hell out of here."

Ellie had no argument for that, so we walked out the door.

She climbed onto the back of my bike and we tore out of the gravel driveway. We passed flocks of trailer park kids with dirty clothes and sticky icecream mouths, trying to squeeze in a few more minutes of play time in the ebbing daylight. Ellie pressed her face into my back and tightened the legs that straddled my waist as we left the crumbling avenue of duplexes and trailers behind us. I took her to Charlie's Pancakes, a greasy trucker dive that had provided me with cheap and delicious food after many all-night excursions. Ellie said she'd never been there before, which prompted me to tease her mercilessly, which prompted her to blush and pout, which I frightened me as I realized it was the most irresistable thing I'd ever seen. She giggled as we slipped into a tacky orange booth and jokingly called this trip our "date."

A round, disgruntled waitress with frizzy black hair and heavy bags beneath her eyes took our orders, subtly eyeing us with disapproval as she did so. Me dressed like a skeevy bum, Ellie being a scantily-clad teenage girl, and us sitting together laughing in a grungy diner probably wasn't the most family-friendly scene. As she waddled away, Ellie wrinkled her nose at me. "You're getting a burger?" she asked. "At a pancake place? Doesn't that defeat the purpose?"

"Pshh, that's what you think," I countered, tucking the lamenated menus behind the napkin dispenser. "They have the best mother fucking burgers you've ever tasted at this joint. I've been on the other side of town at 2:00 in the morning before, and come all the way over here just because I was craving one of their burgers. They're like, as big as my head, no joke."

This visual didn't seem to please Ellie too much; she lost some of the color in her face. "Gee, that sounds.. splendid. But unfortunately I don't DO burgers. I'm a vegetarian."

My eyes widened and my jaw dropped. "Are you kidding me? What the fuck?" I was reminded of the shock and bewilderment I'd felt when little Sean, only thirteen at the time, told me he was giving up meat. "That doesn't even make sense, Ellie. You made burgers for dinner like, last week."

"No, I made _veggie_ burgers," she said with a mischievious smile.

I felt my stomach turn, and Ellie started cracking up. I was not amused. "Aw, man... that's just... That's just wrong. You can't feed a man a burger under false pretenses like that." I sighed and shook my head. "Frickin' hippie, right under my own roof." I fished a cigarette out of my jacket pocket and lit it in the midst of my discontent, adding to the already polluted air of the diner.

Ellie smiled wider. Pissing me off always seemed to give her this sick pleasure. But then, I guess you could say the same for me. "Hey, I'm just trying to improve your health. Combine the amount of red meat you eat with your... _smoking_..." She took a deliberate pause to make a disgusted face at my cigarette. "...and you're just begging for heart disease."

"Yeah well, combine all the random metal objects you stick in your arm, and you're just begging for tetanus." I chuckled softly, but Ellie said nothing. The amusement drained from her face and she was silent, shrinking into herself. Cutting jokes, apparently, were out of bounds in our little game. I wanted, so badly, not to give a shit. I mean, if she could dish it out, she should be able to take it, too. But something in me was giving out. Something made me reach out and take her hand.

"Sorry," I saida awkwardly, stroking her knuckles. "I didn't mean to... be a dick."

She stared with uncertainty and intrigue at our hands, touching so delicately. She grinned softly, still not looking at me. "I know. You never mean to. In fact, you're awesome most of the time... I think I just _push_ you to dickdom. I mean, I'm just setting myself up for this shit... I shouldn't be surprised when you take the bait." She brought her eyes to mine, still playing it off as funny. "I just love making things hard, don't I?"

I didn't feel like answering that. Instead I smoked my cigarette, easing us into silence. I absorbed the cluttered conversations around us. At last I sighed. "What is it with girls and cigarettes, anyway? Girls who are bothered by _nothing _else will still be like, freak out around cigarettes. Wendy made me quit when we first started dating."

I held my breath for a moment, realizing I'd done something incredibly stupid. I'd brought up Wendy. After trying so hard over the past few weeks to erase her existence in my mind, she'd slipped from lips without warning.

Ellie noticed my uneasiness. She looked at me for a moment, thinking deeply. She slid out of the booth and crawled into my side, curling up beside me. "Tell me about Wendy," she said with her face nestled in my chest. She was like a little kid, begging for cuddles and story time.

I sighed and turned my head away from her to take another drag of my cigarette. I ran my fingers through Ellie's hair, staring off through the grimey diner window as I swam through the rush of thoughts of Wendy. Tell you about Wendy? There was so much to tell I didn't know where to begin. So many endless pieces of Wendy that I did not have the energy to sort through..

"What do you want do know?" I asked tiredly. Ellie did not know the dangers of the waters which she waded through.

"Well... why did you guys break up? What happened?"

What happened? If I knew the answer to that, I wouldn't have been the downtrodden worthless mother fucker that I was. If life made sense to me, I wouldn't be sitting in a greasy diner, spilling my troubles to a fucked-up sixteen year old girl. But here I was. "It's not something you can really explain. Just... stupid kids, thinking we knew what we were doing. I mean, Wendy and I, when we first met, we were like... wild. Crazy bar-hopping, up all night, no responsibilities kind of people. Then last April, she graduated from university, I got an awesome job offer in Alberta, we were in love, and the next thing I knew we were married. You know, we had this like, married _life_. Everything just changed, and I guess we weren't ready for it. I mean... it was like..."

I was amazed at how difficult it was to dissect the gradual collapse of my marriage. The entire past year was covered in a thick fog in my mind. I reached for the ash tray behind the napkin dispenser and slid it closer to me, flicking the ashes from the tip of my fast-burning cigarette. I shifted in my seat. "I guess it was more growing up than I was ready to do. We wanted to have it both ways, you know? We wanted to stay free and wild and have fun all the time, and at the same time have this ideal, stable marriage. We were fucking kidding ourselves. We drank alot, argued alot. Pissed our money away, got into some debt. And then Wendy gets this like, amazing white-collar job that pays a shitload of money. And I mean, what am I? I'm this psuedo-alcoholic nobody that does menial grunt work. It's hard for guys to accept it when their woman's bringing home the bacon... My pride kicks my ass every time, I swear."

Our solitude was interrupted as the chubby waitress, still watching us distastefully, plunked ceramic plates of steamy food onto our table. I'd been telling my story to no one, staring vaguely at nothing, but I took this moment of disruption to glance down at the girl in my arms, who'd been watching my face attentively. Man, could the two of us have any more combined emotional baggage?

Ellie uncurled herself from my embrace and scooted up to the table, taking dainty bites of her syrup-coated panackes. "So, what then? You stormed out of the house in a male egotistical fit, never looking back?" She grinned at me, mouth full of pancake and eyes glinting with mischeviousness.

I sighed as I placed my cigarette in the nook of the ashtray and reached for my burger. "Yeah, sure. Something like that. I mean, Wendy started cleaning herself up, turning all responsible and shit. And I was still a loser. And we just started... fighting. All the time. I started accusing her of sleeping around, and she started calling me a drunk... it just got progressively uglier until, I don't know... we gave up. I don't even remember. Relationships are a load of bull shit, anyway."

Ellie nodded, brushing strands of hair out of her face to keep them out of her syrup. "Hence, you and me. The anti-relationship."

I shrugged as I took a gulp of my Coke, looking at her. My broken little lover. "Yeah, I guess so."

We spent the rest of the evening digesting obscenely greasy food, laughing and talking of much lighter things. We discussed old episodes of Power Rangers at length, and moved from there to critiquing the guy on the evening news with the funny nose hairs and arguing over what Jack Nicholson's best movie was. I scolded her for never having seen Chinatown, and she was equally appalled to discover I'd never seen One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. The obvious conclusion from there, of course, was that a Jack Nicholson movie marathon was in order. She said we'd need snacks, and I said we could just raid Sean's candy stash again. We both laughed, but I'm sure we both felt that uneasy pang of guilt as we did. As we strolled out of Charlie's Pancakes an hour or so later, my arm was wrapped around her and we talked enthusiastically about Very Very Jealous, a band I had worshipped in high school and was surprised to discover was one of Ellie's favorites.

It was dark when we returned to our trashy little duplex. We laughed loudly as we sauntered inside, teasing and flirting and acting high on an evening of genuine fun for once. We were in such a good mood we at first didn't notice Sean, planted on the couch and staring at us with the utmost confusion.

He stood up, and Ellie and I's laughter quickly vanished. I swallowed hard, putting forth all the energy I possessed just to not look guilty. "Where have you guys been?" he asked with sincere curiosity. His face was mostly bewildered, but there was the slightest hint of fear and suspicion in his voice.

I smiled casually as I tossed my keys into their usual spot. "Just went out to grab a bite to eat," I said, peeling off my jacket as usual and stretching my arms. Acting as normal as I possibly could. Hoping he wouldn't look at me too hard and see the truth.

"We brought you back some fries," said Ellie, taking the styrofoam container that held my left-overs and handing it to Sean. _Good cover_, I thought. She ran her fingers through his hair. "We weren't sure when you'd be coming back. Was everything alright with Craig and Ash?"

I had to admire Ellie's expertise at lying. At the same time, I was disgusted by her ability to look him right in the eye and act as though she wasn't breaking his heart behind his back. And then I realized I was disgusted with myself. I was worried he could hear my racing heart and quickened pulse.

Sean took the food from her hands reluctantly, as if he knew he was taking hush money. They were blackmail french fries; french fries of deception. "Yeah, um, everything was fine," he answered Ellie at last. There was distraction in his voice. He looked at the two of us. "Since when have you two been so buddy-buddy, anyway?"

I then remembered Sean's temper, those wild eyes of anger. I remembered how much he loved Ellie, how he contemplated her existence daily, how he was completely unaware of her many, many flaws. I remembered how meticulously he used to watch me when I first moved back, waiting for me to fuck up and ruin his life. As I stood there in front of him, bearing my sins so heavily on my shoulder, I felt like time had stopped. Like in this one moment, all the shit was going to hit this fan.

But I just stared at him, my face as guiltless and indifferent as always. "Well, you know how much I hate _feeding_ you worthless kids," I joked, walking across the room towards the kitchen. I reached out and touseled Ellie's hair, an affectionate brother/sister gesture. "But I couldn't just let this rugrat go hungry."

I walked into the kitchen without bothering to catch his response. I filled myself a glass of water, and by the time I'd turned around Ellie was already kissing his cheek, asking how his evening went, playing the part of innocent so well. Ellie's kisses had a way of blinding you from reality, after all. I slipped into my room, and when the door was shut tightly behind me, I exhaled. How long could this shit possibly go on? How far could Ellie and I take this twisted game? How badly could we hurt Sean, hurt ourselves, before it all just blew up in our fucking faces?

We were sabotaging ourselves. That's all there was to it.


	12. twelve

The ridiculously close call with Sean left me feeling uneasy, and the next day I found myself trying as hard as I could to avoid both Sean and Ellie. I sulked around in my room all day, burning through cigarettes and reading old copies of Rolling Stone. I thought I could pull off not talking to them at all before the time came for me to do my night shift, but this plan was spoiled by a knocking at my door.

"Tracker, could you come out for a sec?" asked Ellie. "We need you to take a few pictures."

With the heaviest of sighs, I tossed aside my magazine and went to the door. I reluctantly pulled it open and looked at Ellie, who caused my breath to catch for just a moment. It was bizarre, seeing her stand there in a silky white dress, hair pulled out of her face for once, dolled up all gorgeous and almost resembling a normal girl. I couldn't help but smile, however, at the lacy white arm socks and clunky bracelets that interrupted the elegant prom look.

"Nice touch," I said, stroking her wrist.

She shrugged and smiled dryly. "Got to retain my individuality, don't I?"

"Retain your secrecy, anyway." Unique fashion statement, my ass. Ellie had scars, and no matter how brave she tried to act, I knew she had to keep them hidden.

Her eyes met mine. She said nothing. I took the disposable camera from her hands and followed her into the living room.

What I saw next nearly brought tears to my eyes. That's how hard I was laughing.

"Tracker, shut up," said Sean, looking thoroughly embarrassed and uncomfortable in his tuxedo.

Ellie rolled her eyes at both of us and slipped into place at Sean's side. "Come on, let's just snap a few pictures, okay? And no more complaints-- from either of you."

With a vague grumble, Sean hooked his arm through Ellie's and posed for a picture as I brought the camera to my face. It was all too hilarious, really. Sean, my big bad gangsta brother, the kid who was perpetually dressed in the same beanie, wife beater, and unwashed gray hoodie, always carrying his headphones, scowl, and signature trail of white trash drama, was standing there in the cleanest, neatest tux you've ever seen, trying his damnedest to curl his lips into something even remotely resembling a smile. And Ellie, god, dressed up and looking so amazing, was there beside him, pearly white teeth shining for the camera as she posed and pretended like she wasn't the most fucked up girl on the face of the planet. I stifled my laughter as best as I could and captured a few Kodak moments.

Ellie retrieved her camera and thanked me, and soon she and Sean had scurried out the door. Going to prom, as if they were an ordinary teenage couple or something. As if there was nothing fucked up about their lives, about our lives, at all. We were fucking kidding ourselves. And I was the biggest fool of them all, because I was supposedly the only one old and wise enough to know better.

While my brother and his girlfriend relished in the cheesy and simple joys of high school, I was stuck behind the counter in my orange apron with Sir Dumbfuck himself, ringing up over-priced gasoline and Gatorade and Ho-Hos and counting off each tedious hour. I tried not to think about them, because I knew they sure as hell weren't thinking about me. But as hard as I tried, I couldn't erase those flashes of red hair, those scarred arms, and those complicated and ungodly post-sex conversations from my mind.

"Check it out, man, there's your woman," Clint snickered, pointing in the direction of the customer who had just walked in.

I'd been so lost in my thoughts that when I lifted my head, I half-expected to see Ellie. I then laughed internally at myself, realizing what a ridiculous assumption that was. Instead of the pale, disturbed, unusual teenage girl that plagued my thoughts and my life, I saw a tall, shapely woman snaking through the aisles, gazing at rows of chips and sodas and acting completely oblivious to my existence. Her jeans were tight and ripped in ever-so-strategic places, and her raw brown hair cascaded freely over her bare olive shoulders, blocking her face from view. It didn't matter. I would recognize that swagger anywhere.

Charli.

That's the thing about living and working in the same god damn neighborhood where you went to high school: you're bound to run into people you've got history with. And boy did Charli and I have history. We started dating a decade ago, when we were freshman, a pair of idiot fourteen year olds with raging hormones. It was your typical recipe for adolescent disaster. I was the bad boy, the hot shot trouble maker, and she was the gorgeous popular girl who was just itching to break that perfect reputation and get into some trouble. Her friends and parents hated me, and that just pushed us even closer together. I don't care what anyone says, no matter who your first is, you've got a connection with them, whether you asked for it or not. We might have even been stupid enough to think we were in love. Our relationship was always heavy, always filled with raunchy drama. We stayed together all the way through our sophomore year, when I ditched my drunken parents and eventually dropped out of school. For me, that was a hard time, but for Charli it was field day; she ate up all the drama like it was candy. We lasted a few months longer, but eventually the usual teenage bull shit got in our way, and we broke up.

In the scheme of things, it wasn't a big deal, just one of those high school things. Neither of us dwelled. Dozens of girls came after Charli, and I'm sure the same could be said vice versa. We grew up. We grew apart. We moved on. It was a million years ago. Nonetheles, Charli did still own part of me. She had my virginity and two and a half years of my life, not to mention my Harley Davidson lighter. That's not shit you can let go of easily. So yeah, when she had started making these random pit stops at the convenient store, I admit I felt a little... curious. Interested. Unsettled.

"She wants you, man," Clint whispered, giggling and hissing in my ear. We were both leaning on the counter, trying not to make it obvious that we were staring profusely as Charli skimmed the refridgerated section.

I rolled my eyes. "Yeah, no, I think she wants a Dr. Pepper, actually," I replied with my usual nonchalance.

Clint just laughed. "Pshh, whatever. Girl like that doesn't just _happen_ to get thirsty when it just _happens_ to be your shift. She ain't in here for soda pop, she's in here shopping for some _ass, _man."

I rubbed my temples, fighting the urge to slap my own best friend in the face. "Grow up, Clint. No, really. Do the world a god damn favor."

Clint laughed and ignored my opinion, as always. "Look, man, you remember that dickhead Matt Oleander? He went to our high school." I nodded vaguely, trying not to act interested, even though deep down, I wanted to know. Insanely so. "Okay well, he and Charli have been shacking up for the past few months, but like, just last month, they got into this huge-ass fight at Barcraft." He paused, taking a moment to let a sleezy grin spread over his face. "So now hot stuff over there is on the rebound, and if you asked me, she's looking to return to her roots and score some of that Cameron lovin'..."

Charli grabbed a Dr. Pepper out of the refridgerator and turned towards the counter, catching my eye and smiling slightly at me. I quickly elbowed Clint in the stomach to get him to shut his mouth, and tried to act as uninterested as possible as Charli plopped down her soda and leaned flirtateously against the counter.

"Tracker," she said, smiling warmly. As she leaned closer to me I could see the wooden pendant on an orange-beaded chain that fell into the nook of her cleavage. "How's it going, man?"

I took the ice cold soda bottle and slid it slowly towards the price scanner. I met her eyes, exotic and playful, and was flooded with memories of kissing her. "Oh, you know," I said, babbling nonsense to buy myself more time to just look at her. "Working hard. Supplying the masses with Slurpees and Slim Jims into the ungodly hours of the night." The red lines of light hit the barcode on the cold bottle and the cash register beeped. "That'll be $1.75."

She smiled, and I was moved by forces beyond on my control to smile back. She was mother fucking sexy. "You're so noble. I admire a man who follows his calling in life."

Aw. Wasn't it cute the way she could insult me and hit on me at the same time? Another example of the sad, sorry life I lead. "Yeah, well. I do what I can. What about you? What are you doing these days?" Super model, perhaps? Fourteenth street hooker?

She ran her fingers through her thick brown hair as if it were a casual habit, and tilted her head slightly to the left in a conversational way. "I've been doing some freelance photography on and off for a few years, but I actually just got a really good offer from an art magazine. I'm heading for New York in two weeks for my first assignment. I'll be living there for five months. I might even stay for good, if I dig the scene. I'm ecstatic."

Naturally. She'd finished high school, gone to college, experienced life outside Toronto. Of course she was doing glamorous, grown-up things and living a glamorous, grown-up life. And I was stuck behind the counter. Stuck in the middle of nothing. "Sounds groovy. You're really doing stuff with yourself, eh?"

She glowed with a tinge of pride and nodded. "I guess so. This opportunity has actually been looming around for the past few months but it wasn't until recently that I was able to take it. I just got out of a relationship that was... well, less than fulfilling. It was messy but... it was all for the better. He's moving on with his life, and I'm obviously moving on with mine." She had taken the plastic pop bottle in her hand and was slowly drawing circles in the condensation with her index finger. Every subtle movement of her body was meant to reel me in. And it was working.

"That's the way the wind blows sometimes."

"Yeah, guess so." We both nodded, and smiled, and soon found ourselves coughing in an awkward lull. She at last took the plunge and jumped forward with a nessecary but uncomfortable question. "So... what about you, then? Any current relationships to speak of?"

I could have laughed out loud if it weren't for my self-control. What was there to say about my relationship status? How could one possibly conceive of putting it into words? Sure, Charli. I'm fucking a sixteen-year old. A neurotic, immature, self-abusive, emotionally-unstable, whiney, annoying little girl who was currently partying it up kiddie style at Prom with my little brother. The idiocy and patheticness of my situation suddenly became glaringly obvious in that moment. Standing there with Charli, who'd been just as careless and worthless a kid as I had, and seeing how she'd made something infitintely more meaningful with her life that I had, I realized what a loser I really was.

"No," I answered, feeling deflated. "Not really involved with anyone right now."

She smiled and shrugged as she reached into her purse. "Ah. Well. Sometimes life is easier without strings, eh?" She placed two dollar bills and a piece of paper on the counter. She took a pen and started scribbling numbers onto the scrap of paper. "Give me a call sometime in the next two weeks. We could do some catching up before I leave, 'kay?" She gave me a meaningful stare. "I'd really hate it if I didn't get to see you again before I left. You're still really important to me, Tracker. You know that?" The seductive smile she wore so well faded for a moment, and I could see the honest expression of the young girl that had once been my whole universe. She gave Clint and I a little wave before strutting away, Dr. Pepper in hand.

Clint and I watched her go with synchronized head turns and jaws barbarically hanging wide open. Clint slapped me playfully on the shoulder, far more excited about that entire conversation than I was. "Dude!" he said, tugging at his unruly brown hair and pushing it out of his face. He snatched Charli's phone number from my hand and stroked it lovingly, bringing it to his nose and sniffing it dramatically. "Were you watching that? Do you know what this _is_? This is a Free Booty Call card. She's practically _begging_ you to sweep her off her hot ass." His face suddenly recoiled in disgust and his cheerful mood vanished immediately. He flicked the tiny piece of paper in my face. "I hate you, man. Really. You suck."

I laughed emptily. "Yeah, well, you know..." I tried to pretend as though I was enticed by this offer, but I was too distracted to play along. I found myself unable to wrap my brain around the situation. Could I honest to God pick up the phone and call her, after all these years, after all the mountains of fucked up shit I'd been dealt in recent months? Was I even capable of having a conversation with a real woman after all this time of sulking in post-divorce gloom? I'd spent so much time with my two hopeless teenage charges and my douchebag best friends that I'd almost forgotten there was a normal and interesting world out there. I scared myself with how bad I suddenly wanted it. I knew I was being over-ambitious, but a little part of me was praying to God Charli would be the one to take me out of this fucking place.

By 6:00 am my eyelids were getting heavy, and the arrival of the next shift of store clerks was more than welcome. My shady little corner of Toronto was just beginning to awaken and come to life as I rode my motorcycle home. The deep blue sky was gradually filling up with light, and when I stepped into my house the living room was lit by nothing but the pale pink sunlight squeezing through the grimey windows. Working night shifts could really mess with your head, after awhile. The lines of night and day were blurred and you found yourself constantly alone in the twilight, the surreal hours when the rest of the world was sleeping. Sean was crashed on the couch, still in his tuxedo, bow tie dangling limp around his neck, half-empty bag of M&Ms clutched in his hand. I grinned. It was the kind of scene that made you want to pull the blankets over him and pat him on the head. But, of course, I didn't so much as go near him.

Ellie walked out of their bedroom, having changed out of her prom dress and into jeans and a Whores On Parade t-shirt. It was the same shirt she'd been wearing the day I met her. It seemed alot funnier now. "Hey," she said, smiling when she saw me. She walked into the kitchen and opened the refridgerator. The bright flourescent light spewed out the door and gave an even more eerie feel to the dim house. "How was work?"

How was work? What are we now, married? I found myself growing unreasonably irritable. Too damn tired and trouble-ridden to deal with her. "Work was work. How was prom?"

She shrugged, shutting the fridge door and simultaneously sliding a rubber band off her wrist, which she used to pull her undone red hair into a ponytail. "Prom was prom. There was an after party at Ash's house. We just got back like an hour ago, actually." She sighed in exhaustion, leaning against the mildewed kitchen counter and rubbing her shoulder as though it ached from the weight of the world. When her moment of angsty reflection had passed she glanced up at me, smiling tiredly. "Are you hungry? I could make you something. Some eggs and toast or something." She stretched out her thin arms and wrapped them around my waist, snuggling her face into my smelly black t-shirt. She looked up at me, her face a good four or five inches lower than mine, smiling with a kind of contentment and naivete that was rare in her. It was as if, through her web of dishonesty and self-deception, she'd somehow convinced herself that this was okay. That this was reality. That this was stable and normal and everything she'd been cutting up her skin to find for so long.

I couldn't stand the feeling of her warmth against my tired body. I peeled her off of me, shoving her away a little harder than I intended. I coughed and turned my eyes away, staring at the filthy kitchen floor. Stale cereal was casually spilled in every corner and my heart was breaking as I realized this _was_ my reality. "Look," I said quietly. "Can we not... can we not do this right now? God, Ellie, Sean's right there." I could hear the viciousness in my tone. It was the same asshole-tone I'd used in raising Sean to hate me, and in slowly killing Wendy's love for me. I was brave enough to venture back to her face, and see the confusion and defensiveness in her eyes.

"Um, fine," she said, cocking her eyebrows in that angry way she often did. She rubbed her forearm and yawned, tucking her head back in a pouty way. The room was tediously growing brighter as the sun slowly rose outside our window. The kitchen seemed so small as I watched her walk away from me and open the refridgerator door again. She bent over and peered inside, squinting her eyes as if she expected to find something. As if something had magically materialized there in the past five minutes since she'd last opened it. There was no god damn food in this house. There never was, there never would be. We were always hungry and dirty and lying to ourselves. I could visualize, so easily, Ellie dancing the night away in her lie of a dress at Prom. Laughing with her little friends, wrapping her arms around Sean, swaying to horrible pop music, and not once taking a moment to pause and realize she was slowly destroying herself. And Sean. And me. And everything.

I had to get the fuck out now before I was in too deep.

"I've been... I've been thinking of moving out," I said, staring at the dirty floor. The square patch of sunlight from the window was getting brighter. "Maybe New York or something." I could hardly believe what I was saying, but it felt right. My old man always did say the only way to make a change that matters is to make the decision in a split-second.

I could immediately sense her fearful silence. The tension sunk in so fast and hard it felt like someone was rapidly sucking out all the oxygen in the room. Ellie pulled her head out of the glowing refridgerator and stared at me, pale-faced a slack-jawed. "What?" she said. Her voice fell to the floor with a heavy thud. "What are you talking about? You can't leave us."

The fuck I can't, I thought. I'd had my time to sulk over Wendy, but now I could see the truth, clear as the day that was quickly dawning. This wasn't my house anymore. I'd known it from the moment I'd first waltzed back through that door. It was their house now, Sean and Ellie's. The life I'd once had here was now only an ebbing apparition, and there was nowhere I could go but forward. If I didn't get out of here I'd lose my god damn mind. I fought hard to keep my eyes locked with Ellie's, wanting her to know that I was completely serious. "No, look, I _have_ to leave. I'm not gonna find work around here and I can't just spend the rest of my life working the night shift. I need a change of scene. I need to get my fucking life together."

I could see her lip curling into an unintentional pout. Her eyes were desperate and stubborn, like a six-year-old child. "But... you can't just... you can't just _go_. Don't you even give a fuck about the people you're leaving behind? Sean, and your friends?" She tugged on her sleeves a bit and shook her head, trying to pretend like she didn't feel the solitary tear creeping down her face. "What about... me?"

I took a deep, heavy breath. It was the question I hoped she wouldn't ask. Mostly because I didn't even know the answer myself. "What about you, Ellie? I told you a long time ago I couldn't be the one to take care of you and your bullshit. This has gone on too long already... if either of us ever want to get our shit together, we've gotta wake up and stop pulling this crap. I don't want to do this any more."

I walked away, without looking at her or giving her time to throw out any more comments. I knew exactly where this conversation would go if I let it continue: in circles. Ellie could whine and argue and lie to no end. I had to end this quickly, clean and simple. I went into the bathroom and shut the thin door tightly. I began slowly peeling off the sweaty clothes that reeked so badly of convenience store, dropping them to the damp, rancid floor. I could hear the first of the morning birds, screeching and squawking at one another as if the coming of a new day was something to celebrate. Annoying mother fuckers. I turned the chipped knob and drowned them out with the noise of hot water pounding onto slimey ceramic. As I climbed into the shower, I noticed there were still black hair dye stains on the floor. I laughed quietly.

I stood right under the nozzle, letting the hot water cascade from my sweat-matted hair to my aching bare feet. I took deep, slow breaths and watched the water and my filth dance down the drain, as I tried to soak in the reality. I was walking away. I was going to leave Sean again. He'd probably start hating me again, but that was okay. He wouldn't hate me nearly as much as he would if I stayed around, if I stayed with Ellie. If the house is on fire, you don't wait for things to get better and the flames to die down; you run out the fucking door. One of Mama Cameron's life lessons. This mother fucker was about to burn down, and I had to bail. It was now or never.

"Tracker?" Ellie's shaky voice said over the noise of the water.

I sighed heavily, rubbing my hands across my wet face. You honestly had to lock your door 24/7 with this girl. It just never stopped. "Kinda busy, kiddo," I snapped back. I had to be merciless. It was the only way to break free from her. "And I don't want to talk about this right now. Or ever, really. I'm dipping out and I'm not changing my mind. This is what's best for everyone. Now let me take a god damn shower." I held my breath and waited for her to walk away. But the sound of the door clicking shut never came.

"Whoa!" I found myself exclaim involuntarily as the plastic curtain was pulled open. Ellie, fully-clothed, climbed into the shower and stood before me, sobbing uncontrollably. The water came crashing down on her, and I watched in bewilderment as her heavy black eye make-up melted down her face. She was soaked to the bone in seconds, and strands of damp red hair were plastered to her face.

"Is it me?" she asked, folding her arms and hugging herself, swaying back and forth. Her eyes were tied tight to mine. I couldn't look away, but God I wanted to. "Did I... did I do something to make you hate me? I mean I just... I just want to know. I need to know."

Her pleading face was painful to watch. She held her broken heart out for me to take away from her. Take the hurt away from her. But I knew I could never do that. "You didn't do anything, Ellie." Cautiously, I reached out for her and put my hands on her shoulder, uncertain if she would let me touch her. She inhaled sharply at my hands but didn't move. "It's not about blaming anyone. I just need to get the fuck out of this house. I need a real job, and a real life. I need to finally get my shit together and I can't do that here."

She nodded as I spoke, but it was the same nod as a little girl who pretended to agree with you while she tried to get her way. "But... but maybe you can. Maybe it'll be better to stay here, and build off of what you already have instead of just starting over. And Sean and I could help, and... Look, I know we're not anything real or anything... I know it's ridiculous to even suggest that we're something real... But sometimes I feel like it really helps, having you around, and having you to talk to..."

She was babbling now, sniffing back trickles of snot and making hopeless attempts at wiping away her ruined make-up. Sometimes I really had to take a step back to see just how broken and pathetic she was. She moved closer to me, her body only centimeters from mine but not quite touching. The water pounded on unfalteringly around us. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry for being this way. I just... I don't want you to go. I love you."

Slowly, she laid her soaking wet head onto to my bare chest, crying quietly. I took a deep breath, afraid to move. I let the rhythmic crashing of the water lull us into a moment of stillness. With mountains of uncertainty weighing on my head, I eased my arms around her. I pulled her petite body closer to me and tried to soothe her shaking with my embrace. "It's okay," I mumbled into her wet hair. "It's okay. It's going to be okay." I squeezed her tightly, the soggy rag doll in my arms. It was a good ten minutes before either of us could even move.

It was in that moment that I realized I was completely fucked. From the very beginning, from the very first moment I'd caught her stealing glances in my direction, I'd been convincing myself that this was all Ellie's fault. I believed that I was merely a victim of her destructive games, falling into her trap. I thought she'd planned it. I thought all this time that she was manipulative and seductive and an unfeeling slut. God was I a fool.

As she stood in the middle of my shower, soaked and vulnerable and begging me never to leave her, the walls of my illusions came crashing down and reality was glaring in my face. I remembered in that moment that Ellie was only sixteen. That she'd been raised by an alcoholic mother and an absentee father. That she was so misguided and neurotic she took razors to her own skin. That she was scared, and alone, and immature, and foolish. She was a dumb kid, just like me. I could see now that this had never been a game. It was a mistake, a mess, an uncalculated disaster made by the collision of two selfish and fucked-up idiots. We were both fools, untamed and out of control, suffocating in our own lies, tumbling down. Sabotaging ourselves.

I placed a comforting kiss on her forehead. She wanted me to stay with her. And as I rocked her gently back and forth in my arms, it became painfully clear to me that I didn't really have the strength to leave.


	13. thirteen

School was finished for the kidlets and summer sank in, in all of it's hot, lethargic glory. The window of opportunity I had to get in touch with Charli came and went without so much of a blink, though her number stayed tucked in my bedside drawer, a ticket for the escape route I was quietly ignoring. Like all the great Cameron men who have come before me, I faced the troubling philosophical and realistic problems in my life by pretending that they weren't there. I kept true to my sluggish routine of working, drinking with Clint and Phil, banging Ellie, lying about banging Ellie, and catching a few bad TV shows in between it all. I knew from experience that the shit will inevitably hit the fan, but I chose to live as though I did not possess this little token of knowledge. Why break a perfect 24-year record, after all?

Unfortunately, with every day that passed, my secrets and sins grew heavier. Without school and school chums to occupy their time, Sean and Ellie had this tendency to be home. Like, fucking always. It was all three of us, constantly crammed together in that ass-nasty duplex, while cabin fever and the clandestine tension between us brewed with a vengeance. The awkwardness of being squeezed between Sean and Ellie was magnified times twelve. Having to look at his face only to turn around and look at hers, watching them touch, sharing the couch with them, fighting over the fucking bathroom; it was all too comfortable and absurd and nerve-racking. It made it extremely hard to ignore the truth when it was staring me in the face 24/7.

At the height of both the July heat and the huge joke that was my existence, Sean asked me to take Ellie on a date. Well, sort of.

"Just get her out of the house," he pleaded, staring at me with big blue puppy eyes I hadn't seen since we were little kids and he was begging me to let him play with me. "Make her buy groceries or something, she loves that shit. It only needs to be for an hour or so."

I was standing in the living room, sighing heavily as I scratched my hair and pondering the dozens of reasons why this was an outlandish request. "Yeah because that's not suspicious at all, Sean," I said, shaking my head. "This is a lame fucking plan, man, and personally, I've got better things to do."

Sean rolled his eyes and grunted in his usual "I hate the world and no one loves me" way. "Look, just don't make a big deal out of it and she won't ask any questions. And fuck no you don't have anything better to do. Just please, please, stop being an asshole for one day and throw me a bone here."

I was eighty-percent of the way to making up my mind to say yes, but all the same, I had to drag it out a little longer, sigh a few more times, and make it seem like I was really struggling with the decision. You know, torture Sean as much as I possibly could. But truth be told, he was right. I did have nothing else to do. Not to mention the fact that he was handing me an excuse to be alone with Ellie on a silver platter. And the icing on the cake, the real selling point, was Sean saying please. Sean actually needing something from me again.

With golden timing, the lady of the hour strolled into the living room, carrying a chipping plastic basket of laundry. "Hey guys," she mumbled casually.

"Ellie, put the laundry down and go hop on the bike," I commanded without hesitation. I saw Sean smile slightly and flash me a brief look of gratitude.

Ellie gazed back at me, dumbstruck. "Huh?"

"Questions are for douchebags, Red, now shut up and march. Chop chop, I got shit to do."

And because we are such a twisted group of mother fuckers, she only shrugged and did as she was told.

-----

I told myself that we were at Charlie's solely because the food was good. I refused to let myself believe there was any sentimentality attached to that place, suppressed the urge to think of it as "our" spot.

Ellie ordered a veggie burger and I ordered ribs. We were attended to by a palid bleach-blonde waitress with heavy bags under eyes and track marks on her arms that explained why. She held the plates far away from her face as she carried them and placed them on the table with an unintentional exhalation of relief, as if the very sight and smell of food revolted her. I was the kind of person who threw the word "junkie" around casually, but when I looked into that girl's eyes, I felt a pang of combined pity and guilt. She could be someone's sister, someone's daughter. That could just as easily be Ellie, or Manny, or even Sean. It could be Clint or Phil. It could be me.

I wondered what the waitress was like when she was younger. Did she always know she'd be here, a sleezy cliche waitress with a heroin itch? Was her mom a crackwhore, did she grow up on our side of town? For all I knew, Sean and I could have played hide and seek with this chick. Or maybe she hadn't had that inborn poor-kid trait of lowered expectations. Maybe there was a time when she actually had hopes of a real life, thought she could crawl to the other side of the tracks. Maybe, just maybe, there had once been hope in her life. Thinking about it made my insides feel heavy.

"Um... hello, Tracker?" said Ellie, peering over at me in amused confusion. "Are you still with us, Mr. Cameron? Surely you must be dying to dig in to that lovely plate of flesh."

I exhaled, fading back into reality, and realized the waitress had long gone. I looked at Ellie, who was still smirking at me over her burger. Blinding July light beamed through the large windows and formed a pale, glittering outline around her. It always surprised me, those rare glimpses I got of her actually looking complacent.

"Seventeen," I said, soaking in the word and all that it implied. "So how does it feel, birthday girl? Everything you'd expected?" I smiled at her with playful condescendence.

She shrugged and tossed her hair over her shoulder. I could see her face, then. So young but so tired. God. Only seventeen. It seemed so long ago for me. But I guess it wasn't so far. The distance between us wasn't as great as I'd have liked it to be.

"Well I guess I can see R-rated movies now," she said. "And my boyfriend's throwing me a surprise party. That's pretty rad I guess."

I laughed, wiping the barbecue sauce from my lips with a paper napkin. "Yeah. I guess it was pretty obvious. Sean's not the brightest crayon in the box."

She nodded vaguely and suddenly became very interested in her plate of food. The conversation fizzled out. It was always weird, talking about Sean. We both knew that we loved him, and of course we were bound to bring him up from time to time, but there was always that silent realization that we were screwing our beloved Sean in the ass.

"Yeah," I said meaninglessly. I took a deep breath, slowly dragging my eyes across the diner, looking at nothing and everything. It sure did suck to be me, I realized all at once. "Yeah."

I reached across the table and startled Ellie by putting my hand on her face. She stopped mid-chew and put her burger back on the plate. "Um, Tracker?'

I felt like kissing her, for no reason at all, which was odd. Needing the reassurance of her lips was not something I generally felt necessary. But then, who was I to understand what I needed these days?

I decided not to kiss her.

"So yeah, not that I don't dig cake and shit, but I'll probably be dipping out from tonight's festivities." I pulled my hand away from her face and reached into the leather satchel I'd brought with me. "Teenagers, hip hop music, smiling faces… not really my scene. So um, here's your present now." I pulled a wrinkled piece of black fabric out of the bag and tossed it onto the table, as if it hardly mattered. As if it didn't mean absolutely everything.

She reached out with her thin, pale hands and an adorably curious smile on her face. She grabbed the unwrapped present and held it in front of her. A black T-shirt, threadbare and faded with time, purple and green letters spelling out "Very Very Jealous," a list of dates and cities on the back. It smelled like cigarettes and engine oil. It blocked her face from my view, but I didn't care. I almost didn't want to know what she thought of it.

"I was seventeen when I saw them. It was one of their first tours," I told her. She nodded and let the shirt collapse in her hands. I saw her eyes glow with intrigue as she caressed the tired threads with her fingers. "Clint and I were dumbshit crazy, you know, we tried to follow the tour. Didn't really have the money to make it all the way, but we saw them a fair amount of times. Good shit."

She still hadn't said anything.

"But, yeah… I don't really need it any more. I know it's kind of gross or whatever, but I thought you might dig it. You could call it retro or vintage or some shit."

It was almost the only thing I'd held onto for longer than a year. I didn't even keep my wife that long. It was one of my most favorite things of all time. And I was giving it away to this dumbass.

_I suck at words, Ellie, _I thought to myself. _This is the only way I can say a damn thing to you. This is all I have to give._

She slid it on over her long-sleeved black shirt, smiling down at the soft fabric and petting it slowly. "It's perfect. I love it."

Her eyes met mine and she reached for me, timidly, feeling like she needed to ask permission. I kissed her hard and touched her hair, touched my oldest T-shirt against her skin. Seventeen-year-old me was touching seventeen-year-old her and for a moment, what we were doing didn't feel like the most fucked up shit on the planet.

000000

I chilled with Clint and Phil that night and didn't come home until well after four in the morning, when I was sure all traces of the teenage hooplah would be gone. She was waiting for me, to my surprise, sitting on the edge of my bed wearing only the Very Very Jealous t-shirt. I scooped her up in my arms and we fucked, tumbling in the blankets without saying a word. No "I love yous" or "thank yous" or "happy birthdays" to cloud our minds. Just action. Just comfort. That was all we really knew.

I had never felt more comfortable with her than that night. She was wearing my shirt and we just felt so goddamn untouchable. Everything felt right, finally. I could finally hold her and want it, sincerely, desperately. She fit so neatly and quietly into my arms that I was hardly fazed when we drifted into a dreamless sleep.

In the morning, I could hear him breathing before I even opened my eyes. I felt my heart stop suddenly; my sweat went cold. It was a sickening feeling. The comfort of Ellie's skin still so near to me, but cold hard reality staring me down only inches away on the other side of my eyelids.

Slowly I opened my eyes and saw him, through a bleary morning fog, his eyes livid and his hands trembling.

Sean had found us.


	14. fourteen

Author's note: Some of my readers have thrown out the word "pedophile," and I'd just like to point out that while a sexual relationship between a 24-year-old male and a 17-year-old female is somewhat scandalous, it is FAR from the realm of pedophilia. Maturity-wise, there really isn't much difference between a 24-year-old guy and a 17-year-old girl, and I say this from sincere experience. So anyway. There you go. There are only two chapters after this one. Slowly but surely.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

It happened so fast, so fast that when I try to play it back in my head, everything moves out of order. There was that moment, you know, that initial moment where everything was frozen. Tension in the air as thick as concrete. And then suddenly the room was on fire, everything was in motion, Sean screaming and me arguing and Ellie whimpering. He wouldn't even look at her; he directed all of his acidic anger towards me. I've always been the easiest target. Blame sticks to Tracker like Phil's nostril to a line of ice.

"How long?" I remember him barking, a cold comment that managed to slice through the mess of stuttering and yelling. The room was quiet then, his voice echoed in the silence. Ellie's cries stifled into nothingness. Sean's eyes went soft suddenly, as if the anger had lifted all at once and only genuine hurt remained. "How long?"

I couldn't speak, I could barely look at him. When he's acting like a tough guy it's not so hard to feel bad, but when I see those eyes… Poor kid. Poor mother fucking kid. I should have been stronger than him.

When I didn't answer, Ellie braved a step forward, seeing that Sean had softened. She reached out to touch his arm. "Sean, why don't we sit down and talk for a minute? Tracker didn't…"

"Shut the fuck up, Ellie!" He tossed her hand off of him. I'd never heard him talk to anyone like that, least of all Ellie. Her face lost color; she looked like she'd been slapped. But when I glanced at Sean I could see that it hurt him even more. Tears erupted down her pale face and she ran out of the room, sobbing into her hands.

"How long?" he said again, stepping closer to me, fire in his eyes. He tore his glare away from me for just a moment, as if it was too sickening for him to stand. "I mean… how the fuck… right here in this room…" He couldn't form sentences, he was choking on his word. The reality of this game was like a pill too big to swallow. I felt my mouth get dry, the room got smaller. "How long, Tracker?"

"I'm sorry, Sean," was all I could say. I knew that details would just make it worse. "I'm sorry." I put my hand on his shoulder. He still wasn't quite as tall as me but he was closer than he used to be.

He ripped my hand away violently and gave me a shove. "You're _sorry?_ Sorry? You think I give a shit? Sorry can't even _begin _to fix this shit…" He stepped forward again, and I found myself stepping back. He clenched his fists. I could see the muscles in his neck and forehead tighten.

"Look, Sean…"

"No LOOK, TRACKER!" He shoved me hard and knocked me into the dresser. The metal knobs of the drawer jabbed my back and it hurt. A lot.

"Alright, fuck this, I'm not doing this with you, Seanny." I stepped to move around him, reaching for my jacket on the floor.

The next thing I knew I'd been knocked to the ground by a heavy blow to the face. I felt Sean's dirty sneakers slam into my chest and I was gasping for air. The moment oxygen rushed back into my lungs I yanked hard to pull Sean's legs out from under him, bringing him to the ground with me. I hardly had time to register what was happening. My brother and I were rolling around on the floor, knocking the unholy shit out of each other. I heard the lamp in the corner crash to the ground, glass spilling across the carpet. Sean slammed his fist into my face repeatedly while my knuckles went white with trying to pry him off of me. I heard Ellie's voice again, screaming.

Somewhere in the back of my mind I had the clarity to think, wow, it sounds just like my childhood.

After a few minutes of tossing each other around, I started to get scared. I was pushing, but he wasn't going anywhere. I was fighting back, but I was still the one pinned mercilessly to the floor. We hadn't romped like this since we were kids, and it came startlingly to my attention that Sean had grown a lot since then. Little brother was no longer a pint-sized twerp that I could make say "uncle." Little brother was now a good twenty pounds heavier than me, with meaty hands that could squeeze the breath out of me. Little brother was beating the fuck out of me. Little brother was pissed as hell and I might not be able to stop him.

I was panting. I felt dizzy. My arms were starting to go limp. Through the blur of flesh that was Sean's fists barraging me, I could see those eyes on fire. I found myself terrified of the look on his face, and I began to remember Sean as a kid. I remembered the counselors and social workers, the furious outbursts and tossing dishes across the kitchen and anger management techniques we had to remind him of. God. How had I forgotten just how dangerous he could be? Sean deafened a kid. He was kicked out of school, arrested. Our own parents sent him to me because they were afraid of him.

I hadn't seen this side of him in so long. I guess I deserved it.

I tasted blood, trickling from my lower lip. I tried kicking until Sean rolled off of me but it was no use. My vision started to blur. My cheeks and throat were raw and aching, and I felt a searing pain through my stomach and chest. All at once I felt like my ribs were going to collapse as Ellie jumped desperately on top of Sean to get him to stop. In a few moments I felt all of the weight lifted and I could finally breath. The light faded and all I could hear were the heavy pantings of Sean, Ellie, and myself.

Then everything went black.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

I felt a cool rag and soft hands against the raw flesh of my face. I howled in pain as pressure was applied and yanked my face away quickly. I blinked a few times and the room came into focus again. My breath caught in my chest for a moment when I saw how heavily Sean and I had trashed the room in our scuffle. I took a deep breath and my chest ached. I looked over and saw Ellie, bent over me, clutching a wet rag with a helpless look in her eyes.

"Where's Sean?" I asked groggily, taking the rag from her and pressing it gently against my busted lip.

Ellie shrugged. I had never seen her so worn down and emotionless. "He left. He took most of his stuff with him. What he could carry, anyway."

I laughed coldly. "Typical Cameron." I tried standing but immediately gave up and plunked back to the ground. The kid had definitely done a number on me. "And you? You're still here?" I had fully expected to wake up alone when the shit hit the fan.

She winced a little, as if that comment stung. "Well I mean, I couldn't leave you unconscious on the floor, could I? I wanted to call an ambulance, but I was scared. I thought… they might arrest Sean or something."

"God forbid." But she was right. I was in no mood to deal with cops. The last thing I wanted was more trouble for Sean. I started to wonder where he'd gone, what old friends I needed to call up, what I would have to do to hunt him down. It then occurred to me that maybe Sean didn't want to be chased down. That maybe even if I did find him, there was nothing I could do or say to change things. That maybe this was a family crisis that I couldn't fix.

It struck me for the first time that the damage I had done might be irreparable.

"So Ellie," I said, trying to think and speak at the same time. I stumbled clumsily to my feet, using the dresser to hold me up. I was still dizzy. "Do you… do you have somewhere you could stay tonight? We can worry about getting all your stuff together tomorrow…" I staggered slowly towards the kitchen.

"What?" said Ellie, her voice trembling. She stood up quickly and tried to help me walk, but I moved away from her. She swallowed hard. "What are you talking about?"

I reached into the cabinet and got a glass, buying myself time to pull my words together as I filled it with water from the sink. I gulped and exhaled, and unfortunately, she was still standing there, afraid and expectant. I sighed. "Ellie, I can't let you stay here any more. It wouldn't be right. Tonight I'm going to drink myself stupid, and after I wake up tomorrow and nurse my hangover, I'm going to try and find Sean. I'm going to try and fix this mess and see if I can possibly get my brother to forgive me. I'm not going to be able to make things right if you're still here living with me. I'm sorry."

I saw those familiar tears well up again in the corners of her tired hazel eyes. It was all going down again. "But… but I want to stay. I knew we were going to have to deal with this sooner or later, I knew things were going to fall apart with Sean and I'm still not sure how to handle that but…" She looked down at the moldy floor. She was trying so hard not to cry. "But I want to stay. I want to stay with you."

Those are hard words to say sometimes. I should know. I was the asswipe who didn't have the balls to say them when my wife kicked me out. Ellie was still fighting tears and I hoped with all my might that she would win the battle. I couldn't have her falling apart in front of me. I knew what I had to do and she wasn't making it easy for me.

"I wish you could stay too, kid, but… It's not that simple."

"Why?" Quiet tears trickled down her cheeks. She stifled a sob.

Don't do this to me, Ellie, I found myself screaming in my head. I found myself getting angry. How had I ever let myself get sucked in so deep? "Because, god damn it, we fucked up." I slammed my glass on the counter a little harder than I intended and it made Ellie jump slightly. "Don't you get that? Don't you get that we fucked up? It's not going to be fucking sunshine and rainbows, it never was. We were never going to _be_ together, Ellie. It was never going to be okay."

I had known that all along, but somehow this was the first time I'd let myself say it out loud.

Ellie was full-blown crying now, and I thought I understood why. "I can't go, Tracker."

I moved towards her, slowly wrapping my arms around her as I sighed. "I know, Ellie, but… you can't stay here. I'm sorry, that's the way it has to be."

"NO." She pushed me away and turned, hiding her face from me. "You don't understand. I can't… I don't have anywhere to go… I don't have anyone who can help…"

"What about your mom? Can't you move back in with her…?"

"Are you kidding me? My mom can't even take care of _me…_ I can't go back to her like this."

I felt a lump forming in my throat, like a ten-pound stone. Something was very wrong. "Like… what?"

She turned around again, her face distorted in painful sobs. "I'm pregnant, Tracker." She looked like she was about to shatter into tiny pieces. She was that fragile just then. And sadly, that's how I knew she was telling the truth. "I'm pregnant."


	15. fifteen

Damn, she was good. What Sean had done with physical force, the destruction he had caused me in a fury of explosive violence, Ellie had done with two simple words. She was always tricky like that. No beating, no kicks to the stomach, no punches to the face, could possibly give me the sharp pain inside that Ellie's news gave me. My old man always said the worst kind of trouble you could get in was girl trouble.

He had no fucking idea.

Ellie was quick to turn on the water works, dropping to the kitchen floor and resting her head against the humming refrigerator. Hushed tears emptied out of her eyes as she looked up at me, the way she always does, uncertain and expectant. Damn those doll-eyes. Radiating with constant apology.

After pacing and screaming "What?" for an obligatory two or three minutes, her words were finally real enough for me to process and I took a moment to breathe. "I mean…" I began, using all the strength God gave me to not look at her eyes. I watched the floor as I spoke. "Are you sure?"

"Positive. I haven't had a period in three months and I've taken two tests." Her voice was as fragile as glass.

"Three… THREE MONTHS?" I started pacing again. She winced at my increased anger. "You've known for three months and you never said anything?"

"I was scared, Tracker. I'm still scared."

"Jesus fuck, Ellie…" My mind was racing, jumping from anger to fear to sympathy and straight back to anger again. This was so much to take in at once. There were so many variables to sort through. "I mean, whose kid is it? Do you even know?"

She tugged idly at the threads on the Very Very Jealous shirt and stumbled over tears as she spoke. "It's yours. It… it couldn't be Sean's. Sean and I always use protection."

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean, Ellie?" I moved closer to her, hovering over her as I spoke. "That doesn't mean shit and you know it. I always use a fucking condom."

She closed her eyes in fear, the way a battered woman might do just before getting slapped across the face. "Not the first time. On the couch. Three months ago."

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. It was true. It was so fucking true and I knew it and I was so fucking afraid. "Bull shit, Ellie… That kid could be anybody's. Fuck. I mean, how do I even know you're telling me the truth? It's a little convenient to suddenly be three months pregnant when you're about to kicked out, isn't it? I mean… how the fuck do you not tell someone about this? I can't have a kid, Ellie. I don't know what you thought, but this can't happen!"

I was practically spitting in her face as I spoke. Jesus. I had just pulled the "it's-not-mine" card, the "you're-a-lying-bitch" card, and the "I-can't-believe-you-kept-it-a-secret" card, and the "get-an-abortion" card all in the span of about thirty seconds. World-class asshole, much? This shit was just too heavy for me.

She opened her eyes and looked at me desperately. "I'm pregnant. It's yours. You don't have to believe it, but it's still true. There's nothing I can do to change it. I'm… I'm sorry."

She wrapped her arms around herself, trembling. She was crying and crumbling and looking more pathetic than I'd ever seen her before. She was a giant pile of uncertainty on the floor. She was just a girl, just a scared little girl with no one to hold her, and I was no fucking better than her. I knew that I needed to be a man and take care of this mess on my floor. I needed to take her in my arms and let her know everything would be okay. I needed to make everything right again.

"I need a smoke," I said. And I left her there, alone, scared, and carrying my child.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

I was thirteen cents short for my pack of cigarettes and I told Clint, who was working behind the counter, that if I didn't have that pack in my hand in thirty seconds, I would walk behind the fucking counter and get them myself, in addition to placing my foot firmly in his ass. He decided to cover the thirteen cents.

I stood outside the Stop N Shop, leaning beside the ice box and sucking dry the sweet nicotine from the cigarette in my hand. A beat-up banana yellow car pulled into a hand-capped spot in front of the store.

"You look fucking rough, dude," Phil called out as he crawled out of the driver's seat. He was wearing Spongebob boxers, cheap pink flip-flops, and a Nine Inch Nails shirt.

"You're not looking so hot yourself, Santos," I told him as he sauntered towards me and shook my hand.

"Yeah, well, it's pretty early in the morning."

"It's six o'clock in the evening."

"Tomato, tomahto. Give me a cigarette."

"Go fuck yourself."

"Christ, Tracker, it's just one cigarette."

"Sean's girlfriend got knocked up, asswipe. I'm smoking the whole fucking pack. Blow me."

He threw back his ever-thinning head in laughter and took one of my cigarettes all the same. "Bummer, yo. Shouldn't you be saving some of this for him then, eh?" He slapped my shoulder jokingly. I kind of wanted to rip his larynx out.

"It's mine, Phil. It's my kid. I'm the one who's fucked."

"Oh." His eyes grew a little heavier. "OH. Fuck. I'm sorry, man."

"Yeah. So am I."

We stood in gloomy silence, the kind of lulls in conversation one must take every now and again to just look at life in all of its suckdom. Pregnant. Fuck. That shit was permanent. What was inside of Ellie was going to turn into a full-blown person. A person with my blood in their veins. A person with mistakes and problems and bull shit just like everyone else, and I had to be responsible for them. Ellie was right and I had to face it. There was going to be a kid, it was mine, and there was nothing we could do to change it.

Wendy and I had talked about kids before. Idly, jokingly. It seemed like a good idea to me, back when it was something that would happen years down the road. But now that it was here, I was scared shitless. There were so many things to take into consideration. How was I supposed to afford this kid? How much would this piss Sean off even more? What did it mean for Ellie and I?

"You know, Manuela got an abortion not too long ago…" said Phil, placing the stolen cigarette back into my pack. "My mom took her to this real nice clinic. They were good to her, and it wasn't that expensive. I could probably get the name of that place for you."

That was the real issue. Ellie. I knew she didn't want an abortion. If she did, that would have been the first thing she brought up. Ellie had so many issues with her own mother… god only knew what this pregnancy thing was doing to her. She wouldn't get rid of the kid, I knew, and she damn sure couldn't take care of it herself. Her mother was a drunk, her dad was dead, and she had fucked Sean over too bad to go to him. She had no one.

No one but me, that is. It was me, I realized, that the responsibility fell to. I would be the one to take the blame, as always, if this baby ruined Ellie's life. We had played an equal part in making all these mistakes and I owed it to her to be there for all of the consequences. We tumbled into this mess together. When we walked away from the wreckage, _if _we walked away from the wreckage, I knew that I had to be holding her hand as we went.

God. And I left her crying on the fucking floor.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

I told Phil goodbye and came straight back home. The stereo was on, whiney girl music, as loud as it would go. I didn't see Ellie anywhere. I went to my bedroom. She was lying on the bed. I've never felt so much hurting all at once. I started crying. I called an ambulance.

How the fuck could I let this happen?

The sun is going down slow. I'm shaking just a little. Pinkyellow light sneaks through the cracked olive curtains and falls on top of her pale skin, illuminating her like some kind of porcelain whore. She lies across an altar of unclean sheets. I reach out and touch her, even though it feels wrong, and she's just as soft as always. I laugh in spite of myself. She always tries to act so fucking tough, but in reality she's nothing but fragile. So easily broken, so difficult to repair. Porcelain whore.

There's so much blood, staining the same sheets we laid on time and time again. She looks empty. Nothing left inside of her. I'm clutching her hand when the paramedics show up and the looks on their faces don't give me any hope. I want to tell her to hold on but I don't want them to hear, so instead I just squeeze her lifeless hand harder.

I crawl into the back of the ambulance where they won't let me hold her hand any more. They start trying to stop the bleeding from her wrists.

"It doesn't look good, sir," one of the paramedics tells me sincerely.

I close my eyes and clasp my hands together tightly.

I don't want her to leave.


	16. sixteen

Author's Note: It is my recommendation to the reader, because of the huge intervals of time between posting chapters, to go back to the beginning and read the whole story straight through. It makes much more sense as a whole than as fragmented vignettes. The ending will hit you more strongly if you soak in the whole tone of the story at once. But that's just a suggestion. Thanks for reading, and thanks especially for being patient.

Also: Because this story consumed such a large chunk of my life, I have written out extended author's notes/after thoughts, if you're interested in the behind the scenes bull shit of this story. I will e-mail them to you upon request, because I was too lazy to upload them to my website.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

She didn't leave a note. That's how I knew she was serious. Ellie had a flare for the dramatic, and when a girl like that wants to try and kill herself, she's going to do it with gusto. But there was no note. No dramatic farewells, no last requests, no elaborate explanations. She wasn't trying to prove a point or get someone's attention. She just wanted out. It was the purest form of desperation there is. Just, so much hurting that only _death_ could fix it. She wanted the quickest, easiest way to escape the avalanche of pain that was about to crush her. Every time I think about her sitting alone in that room, so lost and so scared and so hopeless… devoid of any reason to stay alive… reaching for that familiar razor blade… I still have nightmares. I still hate myself sometimes when I think that if I had been there, maybe I could have saved her.

Even Sean says it wasn't my fault. Even he admits that saving Ellie was a much bigger task than simply taking the razor from her hands. Saving Ellie was something people had been trying to do for years. There was a certain part of Ellie that was unreachable. Complicated wounds that nobody had the talent to heal. All the love and support in the world wouldn't change that dangerous streak in her.

But these were conclusions we reached much, much later, after years of grieving and contemplation. After her absence became more of a reality than the lack of her presence. These are the things Sean tells me now, to ease my still struggling mind. These are the things we all say after-the-fact, the mantra that allows us to cope and live a normal life again.

In the moment, it was completely different. In the moment, it was not just "one of those things." In the moment, there were no excuses or explanations. There was certainly no sign of a normal life on the horizon. In the moment, my world was sinking in oblivion and I had nothing to live for.

They say sometimes you have to hit rock bottom before you can start working your way back to the surface again. Ellie's suicide was most definitely rock bottom for me. The bull shit that had been building up in my life over the past year, my vicious and sudden divorce, my growing drinking problem, unpaid bills, depression, the affair with Ellie and my crumbling relationship with my brother... The ground shattered beneath my feet and all of this shit caved in on top of me when Ellie died. It was the horrifying point that pushed my life over the edge.

When someone dies, it's like a bullet goes straight through the fabric of your universe. For awhile you lose all sanity, all hope, because as hard as you try you can't get yourself to accept a reality with this big bleeding hole in it. The helplessness you feel is... unreal. It's kind of like having your hands and feet handcuffed together, being tied to a concrete block, and thrown into a river. Times ten. It throws right into your face the fleetingness and meaninglessness of life. It makes you face reality, bare and raw and sans bull shit, and at that point in my life, reality was the last thing I was capable of dealing with.

I couldn't be in that house any more. It wreaked of her, of her life and her death. It made me want to rip down the walls with my bare hands. I moved in with Clint and Phil, into their haven of constant partying and cheap rent. There were always strangers there, always drugs, always drama and bull shit. There was no comfort there, and I was glad. I didn't want comfort. I didn't want anything. I didn't want to know that I even existed. I felt nothing and I felt like I _was_ nothing and there was no better place to stop existing than the shithole my friends called home.

I drank. Perpetually. I sometimes waded into the river of drugs that poured through the apartment. I lost my job. I stopped taking care of myself. I stopped giving a shit. I barely scraped by. Days turned into weeks, into months. It didn't take me long to fall off the face of the earth. Sean started calling. Wendy started calling. Even my parents left a concerned message or two. I never called back. Rock bottom is a place without visiting hours.

I was plagued by Ellie's ghost, constantly rummaging through my memories of her, torturing myself with thoughts of the life that I had held so close in my arms. The life that no one would ever touch or know again. Obsessively, I tried to remember every fuck, every smile, every veggie burger and petty argument. I tried so hard to hold onto them as long as they would last; tried to piece them all together in hopes of seeing a bigger picture that didn't exist. She was a puzzle that was incomplete. A wrong that would never be righted. A question that had no answer. A life cut short.

When I thought of her, I thought of everything else I'd done wrong in my life. Sean. Wendy. Charli. Money. Drinking. My friends. My parents. My life. Myself. For the first time in my life, I hated myself. I spent my sleep sorting through nightmares, and I spent every waking hour trying to drown every memory of everything I'd ever known.

It was a dark, ugly time. Rock. Bottom. Nothingness.

Three months after the suicide, it took Phil overdosing for me to wake the hell up. He didn't die but he almost did, and when I stood over his lifeless body in the hospital, I saw the spitting image of where my life was going. But more importantly than that, more important than seeing what a truly destroyed man looks like, I saw Manny. I held that sobbing girl in my arms as we stood by her brother's bed and saw how hopeless she felt. I knew that feeling because I had been there, too. And I knew I didn't want to put Sean in Manny's shoes.

I wanted to get my life back. Ellie had given hers up, had not been strong enough to deal with it. Phil was throwing his away to drugs. These were people that I loved, people that I wanted so badly to save. The day I turned my life around was the day I admitted my powerlessness. You can't save anybody. The most you can do is save yourself, and love who you can along the way.

I left Phil's hospital room that day and the first thing I did was start returning calls. I politely let my parents know I wasn't dead. I reluctantly asked Wendy for some money to help get me back on my feet. I called the local chapter of AA. I called Sean, and apologized so many times. We did a lot of talking, and a lot of working to love one another again. We moved back in together and slowly, awkwardly, painfully, but surely, I started to get my shit together.

It wasn't easy, but nothing ever is, and I'm kind of glad for that.

o-o-o-o

It's been almost two years since Ellie's death, and in spite of the multiple storms I've weathered since then, I am now holding the most beautiful girl I've ever seen in my arms.

"Cookie!" she squeals, pounding her chubby fists against my chest. I stroke the fuzzy black curls on her forehead and smile at her big brown eyes. A trail of drool dribbles from her mouth as she pouts at me. Absolutely gorgeous.

I laugh and reach into the red cardboard box, retrieving a lion-shaped cookie and placing it in her tiny hand. No one has ever had me as completely whipped as Sage Eleanor Cameron. I can't even imagine what hell she's going to give me once she starts walking.

"Tracker, if you don't hurry your ass up, all the good seats are going to be taken," Wendy snaps, determinedly shoving her way through the slowly-shuffling crowd. That's my boo for you.

Eventually we manage to snag some third-row seats and it's not long before the ceremony begins. Good old Raditch steps up to the podium and starts rambling his obligatory cliché mush, and I do my best to keep the restless little girl in my lap from making too much of a fuss. After several boring speeches, it's time for the moment we've all been waiting for. My wife turns to me excitedly and I take her hand as we wait anxiously for the C's. I take a moment to look at her, then at my daughter, then at my brother up on the stage, and I smile as I think of how amazing it is that we're all here today.

It's Sean's graduation. This kid's been dealt a rough hand in life, gone through much more than I have, and I know Ellie's suicide devastated him ten times more than it ever could have done to me. But here he is, standing in a dorky robe on a stage that I never made it to, and words can't even describe how proud I am of his strength. When he steps off that stage today, there's nothing but the future in front of him. Nothing but possibilities. Nothing but life. And god I hope he figures out what it's all about with a little less turbulence than I did.

Not that I've gotten such a bad lot in life. I've got more regrets and demons than you can shake a stick at, but I've been blessed with some pretty amazing things. As Wendy helped me rebuild my life, and worked with me to finance my own garage, I began to realize what a good thing she was in my life, and used all the strength I possessed to win her back. She married me again, this time for good I hope, and gave birth to our beautiful daughter just as Cameron Motors was starting to grow into a business I can proudly use to support my family.

"Rachel Maureen Calico…" Raditch calls out. "Douglas Peter Camden… Sean Miles Cameron…"

Wendy and I clap ferociously as Sean walks across the stage. He takes his diploma and shakes Raditch's hand, the same stoic, tough-guy look on his face as always. I've got no doubts he hates those stupid robes and can't wait for this crap to be over, but just as he rejoins his classmates and takes his seat, he catches my eye and grins.

Sage bounces enthusiastically and waves her little hand at her uncle. Sean laughs and waves back. I place a kiss on her tender forehead and she looks up at me with those mischievous Cameron eyes.

"Cookie!" she coos.

I know there'll come a day when Sage is too big for my arms, a day when I'll have to let her take on the world by herself and make her own mistakes. I'd suffer through life's lessons all over again if it meant she didn't have to, but I know by now it doesn't work like that. I have so much to give this child before she leaves my safe arms, so much to teach her about life and love and the big world out there. About all the beautiful but tragic things Ellie taught me.

I reach for a giraffe and give it to her. I guess cookies are as a good a place as any to start.


End file.
